A Natural

by Ross Raisin

  Liam returned and placed Tom’s pint on a coaster. “Good win, that, Saturday.”

  “It was. Fair chance we’ll be safe now.”

  “Couple more wins.”

  “Something like that.”

  Liam’s right hand was splayed on the table, as coarse and yellow in the table light as a starfish. He noticed Tom looking and withdrew it.

  “When did you start supporting Town?” Tom asked.

  “Four. That was my first game. Five when I started going properly.”

  “A lot of games.”

  “Yep. Lot of shit football.” He took a drink of his pint. “Following Town’s the one thing that’s always been, you know, simple.” He smiled. “Most of the time.”

  “Not when they released you.”

  “Not when they released me, no.”

  Tom nodded. He wanted to say that he knew how that felt. “You ever miss playing?”

  “Yes and no. Some of it, I do. Stupid stuff. Holding the ball in my gloves. Shouting. I don’t know if I’d even have been up for playing pro, though. You’re supposed to be eccentric as a keeper, but…” He looked off to the bar and said, “What about you? What was your first game?”

  “Think I was about seven. Rochdale, home to Hull City.”

  “Rochdale?”

  “It’s where I was born. Me and my dad used to support them.”

  “Didn’t know that.”

  “We moved away when I was eleven, season after I signed academy terms. We used to drive in before that. There was a sixty-minute rule for my age group that meant Rochdale was in the catchment area. Took my dad the full hour to drive it, though. He used to drop me off, drive back to Rochdale for work, then come back and pick me up. It got too much in the end. That’s why we ended up moving.”

  Liam was listening closely. “Must’ve been tough, not getting a contract after your family made a sacrifice like that.”

  Tom mumbled agreement and looked away. They became quiet. A man in a suit and sagging tie came into the pub. He bought himself a drink and made for a tucked-away alcove on the other side of the room. Liam continued to look over, even when the man was out of sight, and Tom took in the wide forehead, the smooth line of his jaw. A seizure of longing at the realness of this stranger across the table made him lean forward and jam his knuckles together until they hurt. He had no idea what Liam was thinking, feeling. There was so much between them that was unsayable. “Another drink?”

  Liam drained the rest of his pint. “All right.”

  When Tom came back to the table Liam remained quiet. He seemed distant, thoughtful. Tom wondered if he was waiting for him to push the conversation. He tried to think of something to talk about. He took a long gulp of his lager, put the glass back on the table. The anxious need to understand why Liam had met Easter’s wife wrung inside him, but there was no safe way of bringing that up. Apart from football, there was nothing. When a long time had passed, he said, “You’re back at the stadium, then?”

  “We swapped over, yes.”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “Until the end of the season. And then I’ll stay there, getting the pitch renovation done for the start of next.”

  “Must get a bit boring.”

  “It doesn’t,” Liam said, shaking his head. “It’s my life, mate.”

  He said nothing more, and Tom could not think what his next question should be, so they lapsed again into silence.

  Condiment holders were lined up along the steel shelf of an unlit hot pass. Wedged between two of them was a collection of breakfast menus displaying the logo of the hotel at the other side of the car park. Tom took another slug of his pint. He had drunk nearly half of it already and he knew that he should slow down. He needed to eat too, but he did not want to suggest it.

  “Day off tomorrow?” Liam said.

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Not much. Relax. Go to the gym.”

  Liam gave a hum of response, and the topic was at an end.

  They finished their drinks and decided against another. They walked into the dim cold of the car park, coming to a stop in front of Liam’s car. It was still on its own beside the pub. The man in the suit must have come from the hotel, Tom thought, or been dropped off, or walked up the dual carriageway. Liam went round to the driver’s side of his car and got in, shutting the door behind him. Panic tore through Tom, thinking that he was going to drive away, but he stayed there, completely still, not looking round, not looking anywhere.

  Tom approached the passenger door and opened it. They sat in the darkness, unmoving. There was a machinery catalog in the door storage pocket. A floodlight above the car illuminated the path to the pub entrance, shining on the pebbledash of a shrub tub, the thick tarpaulin of a steak deal banner. Tom closed his eyes. At the touch of Liam’s fingers on his thigh he tightened. There was the sound of their breathing. The dual carriageway beyond the car park. A thumb moved in a small gentle circle on his jeans. Tom could sense the warmth of Liam’s face near his own and turned away from it.

  His neck froze at the touch of Liam’s lips, momentarily against it, then gone, leaving a cold tingling on his skin. The hand on his thigh moved over his own and they knitted together in a fierce cat’s cradle as Liam pulled towards him, breathing at his ear. Tom twisted further away from the brazenness of his lust. The metal fence of a beer garden was diffused in the purple bloom of the hotel entrance sign. In the half-light a fox darted underneath the wheelie bins. A large dry fingertip ran across Tom’s temple, around the hairline of his sideburn and onto his earlobe.

  “It’s OK,” Liam said, sliding the finger over his cheekbone, pulling his face back round, and Tom realized that it was because he was crying.

  He shut his eyes again, their lips coming together. His mouth was numb, sucking and pushing against the shocking muscular strength of Liam’s lips. He forced himself not to let go to the dreadful intimacy of it, panning out until he was experiencing the whole thing from outside himself, outside the car, the image through the windscreen of two men’s heads moving together in the dark.

  16

  Leah moved about the kitchen, taking the butter out of the fridge, putting the chocolate mousse in to set, making a salad, checking on the roast, the potatoes, Tyler. She and her mum had decided on a late lunch after his nap, but he woke up after only half an hour, out of sorts and needy for her attention, so she had put him in front of the television while she rushed around trying to get the preparations finished before her mum and Robert arrived. Chris was in the office. She had not seen him since he came out for the toilet a couple of hours earlier in an unwashed T-shirt, barefoot. She had considered reminding him again about the meal but wavered just as she was about to shout up, and then he was gone.

  They arrived ten minutes early. Her mum greeted her and went straight inside to find Tyler. Robert presented her with two bottles of wine, which she took in each hand and found herself defenseless as he moved in to kiss her on the cheek and give her a cuddle.

  “Been so looking forward to this,” he said, coming inside, sizing up the living room. Her mum picked Tyler up from the carpet. Because they were early Leah had not yet had the chance to turn off the television, and as she looked for the remote she had the feeling of being caught out, occupying Tyler with cartoons.

  “Something smells good,” Robert said.

  “Chicken,” she said, and they moved through into the kitchen. Robert was wearing dark blue slacks and a matching short-sleeved shirt. There was no lady belt, she noticed with a little disappointment, as she had imagined that this might be something that she and Chris could talk about later, if he deigned to come down from his hideaway. They stood around the island, Robert and her mum making approving noises about the food, and she knew that they were already wondering where he was. For an instant she considered telling them that he had gone for an appointment—with the doctor, with his agent—but a flash of exasperation, always having to lie for
him, stopped her. They might hear him upstairs anyway. Or he might sneak down to get himself a drink, a sandwich.

  Tyler was crying. Leah’s mum joggled him up and down, talking gently to him, then buttered him a slice of bread from the basket next to the salad. He took it from her and became quiet as he began eating it, and Leah was no longer sure whether he had not in fact simply been hungry all this time. He had not eaten much of his lunch. Either way, she thought, that was what it would look like.

  “Can we help you with anything?” Robert asked.

  “No. Well, you can open a bottle of wine if you feel like a glass now.”

  “Will do.” Robert went into two cupboards before he found some glasses, the old ones, as those she had intended to use were already on the table. They went through to the living room. Tyler was calmer. He played with some of his toys on the carpet, then ran in and out of the kitchen when he learned that this provoked a response from Robert and her mum, sitting next to each other on the sofa. They kept touching, she noticed. Knees. Elbows. Robert’s big hand briefly on her mum’s thigh. She should feel glad, she thought. Her mum was obviously happy. But instead she watched them with growing irritation at their intimacy, at the naturalness of it.

  “How’s this guy getting on at his nursery?” Robert asked, even though he must have known all about Tyler’s nursery through her mum.

  “Loves it. He’s getting one or two little friends there. I picked him up one day this week and they said he’d spent the whole morning following one little girl around trying to kiss her jumper because there was a pig on it.” They laughed admiringly. She did not tell them that one of the staff had told her this because Tyler had pushed the girl over repeatedly and made her cry. There was a small noise from the floorboards above them. She could not tell whether they had heard and decided that they had not because they were riveted by playing with Tyler, Robert creasing and uncreasing his eyebrows to make him giggle. Leah got up and put some music on. “I’m just going to take the chicken out of the oven. Food’s ready whenever you are.”

  She laid out all the dishes at one end of the dining-room table and carved the chicken while they came through and her mum sat Tyler in his high chair.

  “Sit wherever you like,” she said, arranging a large helping of chicken on Robert’s plate before placing it, with a serviette-wrapped knife and fork, before him.

  “Looks bloody marvelous.”

  “It does, Leah. No easy thing getting all this together on your own with this one around your feet.”

  “It was easy enough. It’s just a chicken.” She set a plate and cutlery in front of her mum. That morning she had laid the table with four individual place settings. She had got halfway through the task, before taking them all up again.

  “It’s a lovely room, this,” Robert said, passing her mum the vegetables. “What an amazing table.”

  “We don’t eat in here that much. Only really if we’ve got people round.” She avoided looking at her mum, hoping that she would not pick up the subject, but she was happily engaged feeding bits of potato to Tyler. Although they had been in the house for coming up to a year, this afternoon was the first time anybody had been round for a meal. And Leah and Chris had only sat at the enormous rustic-effect table, bought one fraught sweaty afternoon at an Oak Furniture Land showroom, twice: the first time the weekend after they bought it, the second on her birthday, when Chris had cooked her beef Wellington and got into such a dark mood over how it had turned out that they barely said a word to each other the whole evening.

  “Chris,” her mum said.

  He was there, in the doorway.

  “Hi, Donna.” He came into the room. He had put on a new T-shirt and a sweater. A sock. “Robert, yeah?”

  Robert stood up from the table, joyful, overcome. He stepped towards Chris and for a moment Leah thought he was going to hug him too. Chris shook his hand.

  “Sorry,” Leah said. “I didn’t know when you were—”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine. I was just sleeping off my medication,” he said with enough conviction for Leah to wonder for a second whether it might be true. They all watched him get a plate of chicken and potatoes, carrots, sweetcorn, bread, salad, and maneuver his cast under the table to sit down in the space next to her mum, opposite Leah and Robert. He had brought a bottle of Powerade downstairs with him, which he drank from now, and as he put it down and started to eat Leah could sense that he was already shutting down, going into himself again. She was moved by the need to help him, to reach out and pull him back, but almost as soon as she felt it, the urge was replaced by a hardness towards him, as she watched his lips, his mouth chewing at the food she had cooked, still not looking over once towards Tyler at the end of the table, who was starting again to cry.

  “I don’t know if Donna told you,” Robert said after Leah’s mum gave Tyler two kernels of sweetcorn to try picking up between his fingers, “but we’ve booked a holiday. Last night. We’re going to go to Corsica. I was up for Paris, but your mum got her way.” A look and a smile passed between them. Tyler started crying yet again so Leah got up and went to him. She took him out of his high chair and brought him to sit on her lap. She imagined Robert on the beach. The mound of his beer belly wet with perspiration. His big hands massaging sun cream into her mother, sliding up and down the backs of her legs.

  “How long you going for?”

  “Ten days.”

  They continued eating.

  Tyler was whinging to get down. She lowered him to the floor and he went straight under the table. He could stand upright beneath it and he started running up and down its length, until Leah picked him up again. “No,” she said. “Naughty.” And felt immediately stupid for telling him off.

  “How are the dance classes going?” she asked because she knew that they liked talking about them.

  “Oh, I’m an embarrassment,” Robert said, chuckling.

  “It’s true. He is.” They tittered at each other.

  “I’m like an elephant. An elephant that needs a hip replacement. But your mum, she puts the young girls in the class to shame.”

  “Shut up, Robert.”

  “You do, it’s true.”

  Chris had finished eating. He was sitting, staring at the table. Leah put Tyler down, and he went off into the living room. “Door,” he piped as he left. “Door. Door.” It was the first time she had heard him say the word, but she did not mention it, in case her mum and Robert had heard him say it before. She started to clear the plates. Her mum got up to help her.

  “I might go and see what the little man is up to in there,” Robert said.

  They left Chris alone at the table. As she followed her mum out of the room Leah looked back at him, still staring down, and she could not be sure whether he knew that they had gone.

  In the kitchen her mum began washing up.

  “Leave those, Mum. I’ll do it later.”

  “I’ll just do the greasy stuff. Save you a job.”

  Leah got the mousse out of the fridge. She put it on the island and peeled away the cling film. She looked at her mum. From behind she looked ten years younger than she was. The dancing, as well as all the other things she did for herself—swimming, Zumba, weekend walking trips—which she had never been able to do in the days when Leah’s dad had controlled everything in her life, were keeping her trim. She was dyeing her hair too, Leah had noticed. And she must have cut down her shifts at the leisure center, because she was seeing an increasing amount of Robert through the week. Within minutes she had completed all of the dishes. She dried her hands, looking through to the living room, from where came the sound of Robert making lion noises. She approached the side of the island where Leah was standing. Leah presumed she was going to pick up the stack of dessert bowls but instead she gently took hold of her hand. The two women faced towards the living room. Robert scuttled past the entrance on all fours, quickly followed by Tyler. Her mum was stroking the back of Leah’s hand with her thumb.

 
“Are you OK?”

  Leah continued to look through into the living room. Tyler came into view again, laughing, being tickled. His face, week by week, becoming the face of his nonexistent father.

  “Yes.” She pulled her hand away and picked up the dish of mousse. “You mind bringing the bowls?”

  When they came back into the dining room Chris was not there. His empty bottle of Powerade sat on the table. Leah put the mousse down and spooned helpings into three of the bowls. Robert came in carrying Tyler. “Oh sweet Lord,” he said, seeing the mousse. “Shall I put this guy in his high chair?”

  “Please. He can have a little of this. It’s got a bit of Baileys in it, though, so not too much.” Leah dug a teaspoon into the soft pudding and walked over to hand it to Tyler. He appeared at first more interested in the spoon than the chocolate, watching it glint when he twisted his fist. When he did put it into his mouth, though, they all laughed at his face, screwing up with concentration then breaking into a smile. “More. More.”

  “Can he?” Robert said, taking the spoon from Tyler when Leah said yes.

  They all looked up as Chris returned to the table. He got himself some mousse and sat down in his place. There was the sound of spoons on bowls. Leah passed the dish around so that they could help themselves to seconds. She asked if anybody would like coffee.

  “Not a bad result yesterday,” Robert said when she was about to go to the kitchen.

  Nobody spoke. Very faintly, Chris nodded.

  “Disappointing not to win, conceding that late, but realistically that’s a decent point against a top-three side, and we’re looking safer by the minute.”

  Leah could see her mum trying to get Robert’s attention, but Robert seemed oblivious, and Leah wanted him to keep going.