by Ross Raisin
He gave a short laugh and then he turned to Tom, his eyes clear and bright in his red face. “So, there you are, my life history. That enough of an answer for you?”
Tom tried not to let the thought of Dan bother him. The story, however, kept playing on his mind. A contrived image of Dan grew quickly into a presence that left the bar with them, walked alongside them on the road back to the apartment. Tom hungered for more details. Dates. Whether it had ended definitively or if there had been later, more occasional, meetings. If they were still in contact now. He knew that he could not seek any of this from Liam, though. While they returned, Liam asked him about his own past relationships. There wasn’t much to tell, Tom said. A girlfriend, Jenni, a long time ago, who had moved away after school and married a military policeman. Nothing since. Part of him longed to tell Liam about Craig, but another, more careful part of him would not allow it. A vague guilt came over him at concealing Craig after Liam had shared his own past with him, but he was not prepared to let Liam compare some ancient episode with a boy and what was happening now.
Later, drunk, standing on the veranda looking out at the enormous black sky, Tom let Liam undress him then lead him through the doorway and guide him onto the bed. He waited for the sound of Liam’s shorts buttons but Liam continued working his hands down the grooves of his back, over his buttocks, kneading, circling delicately with his fingertips, then with the increased sliding pressure of one unrelenting finger until an abrupt thick tide radiated deep inside him.
Liam sat next to him on the bed, still dressed.
“You didn’t know about that, did you?”
Tom could only shake his head. “Do you wan—?”
“No, it’s OK,” Liam cut him off. “I need to sleep. I’m wasted.”
In the morning Tom woke to find the other side of the bed empty. The door of the apartment was open, a square of sunlight on the floor. There was loud birdsong, as if the birds were inside. And then they were—two small hopping creatures pecking at the tiles of the kitchenette for a few seconds before spotting Tom and flying out. He lay on the bed for a while, waiting for them to return, then put on his shorts and went outside.
He found Liam at the pool, talking to the English girls. He was standing in front of their sunloungers. They were laughing as though at something he had said.
“Tom.” Liam smiled over.
Tom hung back, staying by the corner of the pool. “Hi.”
“Apparently this lot got hit on last night by some middle-aged American golfers.”
“Canadian,” one of the girls said, and the other two giggled.
They were all looking at him.
“Bloody hell,” he said.
“You guys should come out with us tonight,” one of them said from beneath her wide straw hat. The others chimed their agreement.
“You could protect us,” another said, and they all laughed.
Tom could not tell whether they knew that he and Liam were together. But then Liam came round the pool and put his arm about his waist. They did not look surprised.
“What do you think?” Liam said. “Sounds fun.”
“Yeah, it does.” They were all watching him again, half-smiling. “We’ll maybe see you out and about then.” He turned to Liam. “Come on, let’s get breakfast. We’ll leave you to it. Enjoy the pool.”
Liam was quiet as they walked up the path back to the apartment. They nodded hello to the gardener, the expecting Dutch couple, the ageless friendly owner, who waved back at them, crouched behind her huge panting dog. They all knew, Tom was convinced. Had heard them, probably.
“Don’t you want to do that tonight?” Liam asked when they were inside, packing a bag for the beach.
“Yes, if you do.”
“That was a bit rude, back there.”
“Wasn’t meant to be. I’m up for it if you are.”
He was not in the least bit up for it. He had been instantly hurt, standing by the pool, that Liam was so keen to spend their final night with these girls. He fell into a brooding detachment while they went to the beach and lay out in the heat, indulging the feeling, finding a wounded pleasure in it. Doubtful thoughts took hold of him: that Liam had grown bored with his constant company; that he was staring at a man with a tattooed neck near the beach showers.
These notions were intensified by Liam’s own silence, and Tom could not relax. He went for a long dip in the sea, becoming aware, as he swam against the powerful tugging water, that he had lost condition since the end of the season. He vowed to get started on building his fitness as soon as he returned home, and at once the inevitability of leaving this place pulled him down like a weight. He swam forcefully out into the lagoon, quickly becoming out of breath, sucking for air on each stroke but making his body continue to work, sensing the buried cords of muscle in his legs and buttocks, and the thought of playing football again, as if rising from the darkness below, impelled him onwards, out into the ocean. When eventually he stopped, treading water to catch his breath, the anticipation of playing, the determination to prove himself, was still there. And, when he started back for the beach, a spontaneous resentment too, towards Liam, for the disordering of how that part of his life could be.
He neared the shore, his knees brushing against the seabed. He climbed out of the water, wanting Liam to notice him, to watch him walking back over the sand. Liam, though, was reading his book. Tom sat down beside him. He rested his dripping body against Liam’s side and got his own book out. He did not want to bring up the subject of that evening. He could imagine, if they did go out, how it would be. The girls assigning them the role of their gay companions, flirting, expecting them to be funny, wanting to dance. They would want to know all about them, and they would have to lie. A cover story would have to be prepared in advance. He pictured again the scene by the pool that morning and felt a reflex of anger at Liam for playing up to the stereotype.
They left the beach to go for what ended up being a long, tiring walk around the lagoon to the top of a hill, where they sat exhausted in a bar to share a bowl of little fried fish. While they ate, Liam, out of nowhere, said, “Have you told anybody about us?”
Tom was startled. “No. What, have you?”
“Yes.”
Tom stared at him, instantly petrified.
“The friend I told you about. Leah.”
“You’ve told her my name?”
“No. And don’t worry. She’s an old friend.”
“She’s Easter’s wife.”
“That doesn’t mean she’d tell him.”
They carried on eating. A crowd of dead fish eyes ogled him from inside their crunchy caskets.
“I wondered if you might have told your sister,” Liam said.
“No.”
“Leah’s the only person I’ve told, you know. She couldn’t believe it. I’ve never told anybody before.” When Tom did not respond, he continued: “I’ve thought about it, but then every time I’ve known I just can’t. Never seemed worth the risk of other people finding out. Not like I work in a hairdresser’s, is it? There’s my dad, for one thing. His position at the club. Not to mention my position. And don’t even think about what would happen if the club found out I’m shagging one of their players. Can you imagine?”
Tom dipped a fish in mayonnaise.
“You should meet her,” Liam said, animated. “You’d like her, I know you would.”
Tom looked out at the lagoon. In the distance a huge white ship proceeded through the ocean. He had suspected this ever since he saw them together at the furniture store, but nonetheless hearing Liam say it had turned him cold with dread. Swelling beneath that too was the feeling that he had been betrayed, that Liam had put them at risk.
He tried to hide it from Liam, but he was unable to stop his foreboding and, as well, the sense that something vital had been lost. That it was no longer just the two of them; that whatever was going to happen between them when they left this place, somebody else would know. “I’m going f
or a lie-down,” Liam said when they returned to the apartment. “I’m done in.”
Tom went out onto the veranda. He sat, weary with the heat, watching a lizard—perfectly still on top of the wall—monitor a fly. He tried to keep his mind from Leah but could not. Even though he knew it was natural that Liam would eventually tell a friend, the fact that he had done so was shocking, disorienting. He told himself repeatedly that it was fair enough, it was normal, wanting to brace himself against the possibility that anything could come between them or mar the time they had spent together here, pissed off with himself for his earlier petulance, which had wasted most of their final day.
A slow wheezing was coming from the bedroom. He got up, causing the fly to drone away, though the lizard remained steadfast on the wall as Tom came past, through the doorway, to lie down next to Liam on the bed. Liam’s neck, his sideburns, were damp. As they lay there, faces close together, Liam began to snore. Tom moved his body up against Liam’s, letting his eyes close.
When he woke, Liam’s arm was around him, although he seemed still to be asleep. Tom placed a hand on Liam’s head. He stroked the hair above the ear with his thumb, revealing the ghostly white skin beneath. Liam came to, grunted, shut his eyes again.
“I do want to go out tonight,” Tom said.
“Huh?”
“With those girls. I think we should meet up with them.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
—
They walked together through the complex. The evening was still hot. Children’s voices, the sound of splashing, came from the pool. A barbecue had been lit on the Dutch couple’s veranda, and the smell of cooking meat carried on the air. Liam apparently knew which was the girls’ apartment. He walked up the path towards their door while Tom hung back, surprised at his assuredness, wondering whether maybe there had been some other interaction between Liam and the girls that he had not known about. The door opened, and a girl with short dark hair was saying hello to Liam. She had a towel wrapped around her. As she spoke to him in the doorway another one approached, smiling, in only a skirt and a bra—confirmation, Tom thought, that they did know he and Liam were a couple. Liam was turning to come back down the path.
“We’re going to meet them in a bar,” he said, putting his hands on Tom’s shoulders and leaning in to kiss him on the mouth in full view of the Dutch couple on their veranda.
They sat at a table outside the bar, on the cobbles. Across the street, vendors were packing up their stalls. An African man knelt before a suitcase, carefully placing into downy slots the artifacts that a woman passed down to him.
“Last night, then,” Liam said. “Cheers.”
They knocked their beer bottles together. Tom waited for him to say more about the holiday, about their return home, but nothing came. They watched the stalls coming down. Holidaymakers were going up the street and into the bars and restaurants, some of them still in swimwear, only now leaving the beach.
They were on their second beer when they saw the girls walking down the street towards them. Tom watched their approach, ready to take his cue from Liam, but upon their arrival Liam did not get up to greet them and Tom was happy to stay in his seat. The girls went inside to get drinks, and came back out a few minutes later with a tray of beers and dark red shots.
“To holidays,” one of the girls said. They held up their shot glasses, then downed the contents.
“I’m Laura, by the way,” the same girl said to Tom. “This is Eve, and Jo.”
“Tom.”
Laura and Eve had similar short black hair, sun-bloated freckles. Tom had presumed that they were sisters, but early in the conversation, Jo—small, blond, who had already attracted the attention of a group of shirtless boys walking up from the beach—informed them that the three had met at university. They had been in the same hall of residence during their first year and were about to move into a house together.
“What about you guys,” Laura asked. “What do you do?”
It struck Tom only then that they had neglected to discuss a cover story. He hesitated, waiting for Liam to answer.
“Tom’s an underwear model.”
Tom let out a breath of surprise, embarrassment. The nasty sweet belch of the liquor filled his nose.
“Cool,” Laura said. She smiled at Liam. “Lucky for you, eh?” She turned to Tom. “And what about this one?”
Tom wiped his mouth. Composed himself. “He’s a butcher.”
For a moment there was silence.
“Wow. Butcher and underwear model. That’s different. How did the two of you meet?”
Liam was grinning at him, and Tom understood that he was challenging him to answer, enjoying this.
“The Internet,” Tom said.
Liam’s hand was on his leg. After a pause, during which Jo noticed it there, Tom put his own hand down on top of Liam’s.
“More drinks?” Eve made to stand, but Liam gestured for her to sit down and got up himself to go to the bar. A few tables away, a noisy party of men settled themselves in. Above the heads of the three girls a fat red sun dappled the forested top of the hills beyond the lagoon.
“How long have you two been together?” Eve asked.
“Couple of months, maybe.”
“Oh, not long. Must be going well, then?”
He wondered whether they would have spoken like this to a straight couple, and for an instant he imagined Leah there sitting alongside them. “It is.” He did not, however, feel annoyed by their nosiness. What he felt was drunk and, when Liam returned from the bar with another tray of the red shots, uninhibited. Anonymous. They downed the shots and he stretched over towards Liam to kiss him, enjoying the look of surprise on his face, uncaring of the girls, the other tables, the happy stream of people moving past them from the beach.
They went on to another bar, which was busier, louder. Some people on the other side of the place were dancing. Jo offered to help Tom get more drinks while the others looked for a table. She was more reserved than the other two, and she stayed quietly beside him while he ordered a round of vodka and sodas, a beer for Liam. For a moment, as they stood together, he felt an urge to talk to her, to speak he did not know what about, but the music was booming, and anyway a man had taken her attention, was saying something to her. A few men, he saw now, and he perceived in their regarding of her something expectant, untoward. He stepped up alongside her, facing the men.
“All right, fellas?”
They looked at him indifferently. Four older men in chinos, Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned down moist slack chests.
“Probably time to fuck off, isn’t it?”
They stiffened, unsure how to respond. One of them muttered something into the ear of another and they turned, in sequence, to move off. Tom did not know what to do then. He looked back towards the bar. When he handed a couple of the drinks to Jo, she was smiling at him. “Thank you. Idiots, those lot.”
“Who were they?”
“The Canadian golfers.”
When they found the others standing near the entrance, Jo told them about the encounter at the bar. So odd did it sound to hear about what he had just done, he could not help but laugh, even before he saw Liam’s reaction.
Laura and Eve indicated that they were going to join the dancers. Laura, departing, took Liam’s hand. Liam did not resist and was sucked, still holding her hand, into the bodies. Tom watched the top of his head above the crowd, weaving away.
Jo touched him on the forearm. “Come on.”
They slid through, following the slipstream that had not yet closed behind the others. Up ahead he could see Liam, already dancing. Something sudden rose inside him at the sight of him: the great feet stomping, arms flexed at the elbows into locked right angles, like a forklift. A small force field had opened up around him on the dance floor. Laura and Eve were dancing nearby, enjoying the show, but Liam appeared not to be aware of them or anyone else. Tom pushed towards him until he was at his side, copying h
is movements, stamping the ground, crooking his arms.
“You dance like a butcher,” Tom shouted.
Liam began stamping even more vigorously, grinning madly. Tom followed suit, clapping—then, as the track changed, jumping, bouncing; Liam, the girls, the dancers around them jumping too, following Tom’s lead. Liam wrapped his arms around Tom’s middle, still bouncing. Tom put his mouth to Liam’s ear. “Not the Hut, is it?”
Liam jumped harder, lifting Tom now with each spring. “Fuck them, mate.” He turned his giant sweating face to Tom’s. “Fuck the lot of them.” Tom loosened his arm from Liam’s grip and thrust it upwards with the beat of the music. Liam put his head back, laughing as they clung to each other amid the latticework of tan lines glowing in the dark, still bouncing, punching the air in unison.
—
They parted in the airport. Surrounded by the melee of the departures hall, Tom took hold of both Liam’s hands and, in full view of all the gawping children and silently disgusted fathers, kissed him. He had planned this. Built himself up to it.
“Fucking homo,” Liam whispered, and Tom kissed him again. They checked in, dropped off their bags. In the security line Tom watched Liam step forward towards the scanner. On one of his wrists there was a shocking white handcuff. The oddness of it rendered Tom, to the irritation of the man behind him, momentarily still. They would be back home in a few hours, he thought. Their time here was over, the separateness of it so distinct that it was already, not even out of the airport, beginning to take on the unreality of an illusion.
20
Anyone heard anything about new signings?
Started by Mary B,
Replies:
78
27 May 2012 ≤ 1 2 3 4 5 ≥
Views:
541
