The Summer of Us

by Lily Morton

  I laugh and stand up. “Go get showered you dirty bastard and hurry up because the fireworks are waiting.”

  “You sound like a little kid.”

  “One that’s about to have a tantrum if I don’t get my fireworks and food.”

  “Okay, okay.” He stands up and stretches lazily before wandering inside, dirt falling from him at every step. I stare after him marvelling at how he’s changed me. A few weeks ago my OCD tendencies would have seen me following him with a sweeping brush and dustpan, but now I just take another sip of my drink and look up at the sky flaming with colour.

  Matt

  An hour later showered and dressed in a red polo shirt and stone cargo shorts I’m sitting beside him as he throws his car round the tight bends of the coastline roads. The top is down and the wind blows my hair around.

  I’m trying hard not to look down at the steep drop by the side of the road but if I’m not looking there then I’m being a creeper, because I’m drawn to the strength of his tanned hands as they grip the steering wheel and the veins that show in his arm as he grips the gear shaft and easily changes gear. I can’t help but wonder what those long fingers would look like curled around my dick and then curse myself and shift in my seat as my dick hardens.

  Catching my movement he looks sideways at me and smiles a mischievous smile that I’m seeing a lot lately, the one that elongates a pair of dimples that I have never seen before. “Scared?” he asks in his deep, rich voice.

  I clear my throat from the thick heat that’s lingering there and put my feet up on the dashboard. I’m aiming for a dash of insouciance and a whole lot of concealing my hard on. “Not at all,” I murmur. “I’ve driven with Bram in Italy and he’s got the attention span of a flea.”

  For a second I’m sure that he’s going to tell me to take my feet off the pristine interior of his Jaguar E Type as he’s always seemed like the ultimate in tight arses to me and not the good kind, but again he surprises me when he laughs and ignores my feet in their red, white and blue checked Vans. “Is he really that bad?”

  I’m confused, my thoughts scattered by the sight of that wide, joyous smile and the sound of his laughter. “Who?”

  He shoots me a quizzical look. “Bram.”

  I relax. “Oh yeah definitely. He’s very absent minded. He parked his Porsche in a short stay car park at Heathrow Airport once and forgot it.”

  He whistles. “Was it while he was away for a few weeks because my God that’s expensive?”

  I shake my head. He really doesn’t know Bram. “No, three years.”

  He laughs out loud and then slows the car, before pulling it over to the side of a road and tucking it under a wide tree. He turns to look at me.

  “Here?” I ask stupidly.

  He shrugs. “Like I said the beaches at Cannes will be full and I know this beach well. I’ve been coming here for a walk for a few years and I’ve never seen another soul here, and it will have a perfect view of the fireworks. I know because they went off one night when I was walking and I nearly shit myself.”

  I laugh and he opens the boot removing a picnic basket and grabbing an old plaid blanket and then he nods towards a narrow path. “We go down that way.”

  I wander over and peer down before stepping back quickly. “Fuck, that’s a steep drop.”

  He walks up next to me cocking his head appraisingly. “I think that’s why it’s usually deserted. There’s a lot of these little coves dotted around here.”

  “Waiting for mountain goats and you I should think. Well come on then I’m fucking starving.” He smiles and hands me the blanket and goes back to retrieve a cool bag before locking the car. I look at the assortment of bags. “Are we picnicking or moving house?”

  “Shut the fuck up. You’ll be glad of these later.”

  I open the cool bag and see a couple of wine bottles, their glass glistening with cold. “Yep you’ve got that right. You see this is why I’m gay. If I was with a woman some valuable alcohol space would have been wasted on candles.”

  “And that’s the only reason that you’re gay? I didn’t realise it was mainly a packing and alcohol dilemma.”

  I lower my sunglasses and give him a long look, trying hard to ignore how good he looks in a pair of navy blue shorts and red checked shirt. “No there’s a much bigger reason.” I want him flustered for some reason. I need to see this confident man on the back foot, something that doesn’t happen very often. But yet again he surprises me by laughing with no trace of embarrassment.

  “Those who boast most usually have the least, as my old nanny always used to say. Come on, maybe your extra limb will help with your dexterity.”

  He saunters off down the path leaving me laughing and then I hasten to catch up with him feeling the lingering heat from the sun still warm in the enclosed cove. I stop a second to admire the golden sand and the water sparkling red in the last few minutes of the sunset. “This place really is beautiful,” I murmur, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus and salt that’s heady in the air.

  He looks back at me his face softening. “It really is,” he says happily. “I try and come here most mornings for a swim before I get the newspapers.”

  “That’s where they come from. I thought that you had them delivered and Odell had been up all night ironing them. Felt a bit like ‘Downton Abbey’ in my head.”

  He shoots me a glare and I throw my head back laughing and follow him down the steep path. “Seriously though John I’ll come with you in the mornings if you don’t mind the company. I love swimming in the sea first thing. It wakes me up.”

  He looks back at me. “I’d like that,” he says almost shyly. “I’ve never had company before but I forgot your love of the sea.”

  I shoot a look at his back when he faces forward again. I’ve noticed this last couple of weeks that he always seems surprised if I express pleasure in his company, and I vow then that I’m not going to just fuck off to bed from now on, no matter how knackered I am. I like this man and I want to spend more time with him. I also want him to share this place with me because I get the feeling that he shares very little with people, not from natural distance as I’d originally thought, but because he’s unaccustomed to doing it. I refuse to think too much about how much I enjoy him. He’s a friend to me I chant inwardly as I’ve found myself doing a lot.

  We make it down to the beach and I humour him by spreading out the blanket to military precision and then setting out the picnic basket. I think of my weekends surfing when dinner might be a bag of chips eaten happily with a beer, in my wetsuit sitting on a damp towel. However, when I look into the basket I see cold roast chicken and salad, some of Odell’s white bean tapenade to spread on baguettes as well as her gorgeous yoghurt cake which is arguably better than chips. Eating the food from the plates that he produces with a flourish is also much more civilised than eating with my fingers. However, while I sip rose wine from a crystal wineglass I still make a mental vow that if we become friends then I’ll take him to Cornwall and make him eat chips on a soggy towel.

  I snort at the thought and he looks quizzically at me where I’m lounging back on the towel replete and content to lie with my head cushioned on my rolled up hoody talking occasionally and then lapsing into what with him are comfortable silences. With him I’m never stuck for conversation and even when we don’t talk he doesn’t feel the same need that Ed did to fill every second with noise while missing out on the beauty that a night like tonight brings, with the sun vanishing and letting Cannes come out to play like a funfair with twinkling lights and the sound of music drifting on the breeze.

  “What?” he asks and I stare at him for a second. He looks utterly content to sit back lounging against a rock staring out to sea and I see that all the little lines on his face which come I think from stress, are utterly smoothed out like the sand when the tide retreats.

  Then I realise that he’s asking me what I’m laughing at but I shake my head and instead ask the question that’s been at the bac
k of my mind since we came down to the beach. “You mentioned a nanny. Did your mum work?”

  He snorts. “No, of course not. My mother has never worked a day in her life.” He pauses. “She sits on committees.”

  “Sounds painful,” I comment, and he roars with laughter.

  “I know. I just had a mental image of her squatting over some terrified members of the Women’s Institute. Scary.” He looks out of the corner of his eye at me. “The committees kept her too busy to look after me and she wasn’t naturally maternal.” He smiles. “Or warm either, so we had a succession of nannies.”

  “A succession? Were you that bad?”

  He shakes his head and an almost angry expression crosses his face. “No I was good. It was my father that was bad.”

  “Oh? Oh.” I realise what he means.

  “Yes. I was actually quite glad to go off to boarding school to be honest because home was never much fun with heated recriminations flying around along with the family china, and yet another nanny packing her bag.”

  “Not exactly ‘Mary Poppins’ then?” I muse and he snorts out a laugh.

  “Fuck no, very far from it. More like Confessions of a Domestic.” He pauses and then shoots me a surprised look. “Bloody hell I think that’s the first time that I’ve ever laughed about that.”

  I shrug. “Don’t feel guilty if that’s what’s on the tip of your tongue to say. It wasn’t your fault and you either laugh or cry.”

  “Is that how you’ve lived your life?”

  I think back over the years and the mess of my childhood and then I think of Bram and the boys and nod slowly. “I suppose when you look at it yes that’s what I do. It’s what we’ve always done. If you can laugh then they haven’t won.”

  He stares at me for a long second as that blunt little statement folds into the ether and then something else drags my attention. Really he’s a source of immense interest to me. I want to hear all about his life. I want to know everything. Curiosity about people has always been one of my vices. One of them anyway - I have many. “When did you go to boarding school?”

  He looks out to sea. “When I was seven.”

  “What?” The volume of my voice scares away some seagulls loitering nearby in the hope of pinching any leftovers.

  He smiles. “You heard me.”

  “Fucking hell, seven. That’s young.”

  He shrugs, getting to his feet and brushing the crumbs off. “Not really. Amongst my mother’s family that’s about normal. Shall we go for a walk?”

  I forbear from pointing out that there’s nothing fucking normal about sending a baby away from home that early, and instead let him pull me to my feet feeling the warmth and strength in his hand. I want to ask whether he would send his own child away at that age but I don’t bother because I think that I already know the answer in the form of the decent, honourable, if stern man walking away down the beach.

  I catch up with him making sure that I kick some water up the back of his legs hitting his backside.

  “Twat,” he says affectionately and then bends down and catches a big handful of water, scooping it up and throwing it at me.

  “Fucking hell,” I shout, back pedalling and joining in with his helpless laughter, glad to see his sad look gone. I don’t like to see him sad.

  We exchange some more sallies and then by unspoken agreement we walk on. It’s beautiful out here now with a huge yellow moon making it almost as light as day, and the only sounds are the lap of the water, the crunch of the sand and the distant sound of music from Cannes. He looks sideways at me where I’m looking out at the bright lights. “So that’s my fucked up childhood, what about yours?”

  I hesitate because I never tell anyone this, ever. My life began when I found my real family in the boys and I don’t like to dwell on what went before, but something about the quietness and not looking at each other helps when exchanging secrets. Something in this man makes me want to let him in, to tell him things about myself that I wouldn’t tell anyone else. It’s not the way that I do things. I keep the secrets, including my own.

  He must take my hesitation for refusal because he shakes his head a little sadly. “Never mind. Not my business. I -”

  I interrupt. “No it’s not that, it’s just hard to remember and speak of it because I tucked it away a long time ago.” I pause and then go on, my throat thick. “My family are very strict Roman Catholics.” He looks at me waiting and I swallow hard. “As good abiding Catholics they disapprove of homosexuality.”

  He looks as if a lightbulb has turned on. “Ah! Oh Matt.”

  I nod, determined to get this out quickly. “As such when I came out to my parents it wasn’t exactly a Hallmark moment.” I pause and laugh. “Well not unless that Hallmark moment includes punching your son in the face.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!” He paces back to me water splashing around his ankles and glowing bright in the moonlight, and I gulp as he gets close. “What happened?” he asks fiercely.

  I shrug. “He got in a few good punches because I was too surprised to do anything.” I’m ashamed that I feel the need to justify my failure to hit back and he must sense this because he’s shaking his head before I can finish the sentence.

  “Matty it’s a rare son that hits back the first time that his father lifts a hand to him.” I look up caught first by his use of the nickname that Bram uses for me which sounds different and somehow more when said in his rich, deep voice. I’m held however by the odd note of conviction in his voice, as if he knows. “What happened then?” he asks.

  I look at him, the moonlight catching in his hair making his eyes look almost black. “He threw me out of the house,” I say quietly. “With only the clothes I had on. I had to leave that night.”

  “How old were you?” he asks fiercely.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fuck,” he exclaims. “What sort of person does that to their own child?”

  I shrug. “A heavily religious one?”

  “Where did you go?”

  I smile more genuinely at this. “I went to Bram’s house, confessed I was gay, answered his highly involved and intrusive questions, and then he snuck me into his room to sleep for a few nights and after that whenever he wouldn’t get into trouble.” He looks at me and I shrug. “Another story.”

  “So what happened? When did he have you back?” I stare at him and he seems to fold in slightly. “He didn’t have you back did he?” I shake my head. “What happened? Did social services get involved?” He hesitates. “Did you go into care?”

  I shake my head. “I never reported it and nobody in authority guessed.”

  “What?”

  I smile at his indignation. Nobody apart from the lads has ever seemed this bothered by my upbringing, and they were all going through their own shit anyway. “I didn’t want to report it. If I had, I’d have been taken into care and I could have been moved anywhere. I didn’t want that.”

  “Because of the lads?” he asks gently, and I nod.

  “Exactly. They were more my family than my own parents were by that point. I couldn’t bear to be taken away from them.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I only had a few months left at school so I forged signatures on school letters and slept on Bram’s floor for a few nights at a time, and at Charlie and Sid’s house for the rest. Their mum Jen was the best. She used to feed me and let me sleep there. When I left school I got a job on a construction site and got a bedsit, and repaid the favour to Bram by letting him bunk with me when his home life got too bad.”

  I forbear from mentioning sleeping on benches before I started work, but he shoots me a keen glance as if he suspects that more happened. “Did you ever reconcile?”

  I shake my head. “My dad died three years ago and my mum forbade me to go to the funeral. I haven’t seen her since I was thrown out.” I swallow hard at the thought of the mum that I’d loved so much as a small child. She’d been warm and loving and everything to me and I�
��d thought that she’d always protect me, but she didn’t even protect me from my father and my last memory is of her standing silently and stone faced to one side as my dad grabbed me by the throat and threw me out like a piece of rubbish for the bin men.

  Suddenly heat surrounds me and I gasp as John stands close and pulls me against him in a tight hug, one hand curled around my skull keeping me against him as I stiffen in surprise. “I’m so sorry Matty,” he whispers, and I stand still for a second until against my will my body suddenly slackens against him and I let my full weight slump against him, feeling his weight and knowing with a deep certainty inside me that he will hold me up.

  We stay like that for what feels like forever but is actually only a few minutes, him offering comfort and me taking it without any need for words, until a sudden massive bang makes us jump apart and the sky above us explodes in reds and golds and greens.

  “Fucking hell I’d forgotten the fireworks,” he shouts holding his hand to his chest like a little old lady, and something in his indignant expression that says how dare the fucking world have restarted itself without his express permission, makes me start to laugh. Once I start I can’t stop until he joins me, touching my shoulder as we bend double laughing until tears slide down our faces as Cannes sets light and colour to the night.

  Chapter 4

  Song: ‘Temptation Waits’ by Garbage

  John

  A few days later I sit on the patio cradling a cup of coffee and staring out to sea. However, I don’t see the view that normally calms me because of the image that’s still in my head of a young, bruised boy limping back to his best friend because his bastard of a dad couldn’t see what a wonderful man he was bringing up. I grip the cup tighter. I’m so angry that a man like Matt had so much thrown at him at such a young age and then I wonder whether the man he became is actually because of that treatment.

  He’d risen like a phoenix from the ashes of his childhood, had really made something of himself and drawn his own family to him, and I feel an odd sense of pride in him. Odd because I don’t normally delve into the deeper feelings and motivations of people. This probably makes me sound like a complete bastard and maybe I am, because people’s feelings are so fucking messy at times and they cover you in feelings that are sticky.