Trowchester Blues

by Alex Beecroft

  Two other magistrates sat with her, one on either side, both of them looking shifty and worried. “She got to them,” he whispered, as he was forced to let Michael walk away to the public benches. “Look at them, they can’t even look me in the eye. They’re going to do whatever she wants.”

  “I’m sure you’re imagining things, Mr. Hulme,” Todd humoured him with a tolerant smile, spreading out his files on his own bench as they sat, waiting for Finn to be accused.

  The prosecutor rose to read the charge. “Remember,” Finn’s solicitor whispered beneath the drone of his opponent’s voice, “when he asks you how you plead, you’re going to answer ‘guilty.’”

  “On this charge, Mr. Fintan Hulme, how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”

  Finn stood up, opened his mouth, and Lady Harcombe made a stop gesture with a hand constellated with diamond rings. “A moment. Mr. Hulme, Mr. Todd. I would like to speak to you in camera.”

  Todd gathered all his papers together with a harumph, as though this was highly irregular. The magistrates rose, and Lady Harcombe led the way out of the court through a small side door. Finn and Todd followed.

  For an inner sanctum, it was very disappointing. More scrubby wood panelling and threadbare carpet, a scuffed desk piled with cardboard folders, a single chair in which Lady Harcombe sat enthroned.

  “You asked us here so you could gloat?” Finn allowed himself to be unwisely goaded by her little small smile. “It’s not enough to get me jailed, you have to apply the personal touch first?”

  “This kind of behaviour is not helping you, Mr. Hulme,” Todd whispered urgently, trying to press down his thinning hair as if it too were being dangerously rebellious.

  Lady Harcombe laughed. “Don’t say that, Mr. Todd. I find it rather charming.”

  Pretentious, condescending, evil-minded witch.

  “So utterly self-defeating. You don’t even know what I’m about to say, Mr. Hulme.”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me soon enough.”

  He wasn’t going to show her fear, that was for sure. He could survive this, and he would. He would come out and be done with it, ready to start a new life blameless as an angel with a man who was ready to stand by him however long it took.

  Dear God, he already missed Michael’s presence at his elbow, that sense of patient, silent support. Why would he not come back for that?

  “I understand that I have you to thank for the retrieval of my book, Mr. Hulme?”

  “That’s right.” Much good it did me.

  “Mr. Hulme, please look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

  He did, if only to check that she’d really had the audacity to say such a thing. She must have done. She was smiling.

  “We had an agreement, you and I.” Pink lipstick, like an English rose, and a smile as cunning as any serpent’s. “Did we not? You would help me get my book back, and I would let you go.”

  His mind took a wrong step and tripped up. Why would she say that? Where would that sentence take her that she could possibly want to go?

  “You may have said as much,” he ventured, trying to see how the agreement might harm him, but coming up empty.

  “Well, then.” She offered her outspread hands as though passing him something—a conclusion. “I strongly advise you to plead ‘not guilty.’”

  “So you can send me up for trial? So I forfeit any leniency I might get? So my punishment is worse?” What was she up to? Was she making absolutely certain he would go to jail? Was she really that devious?

  “I saw your young man in the public seats.” She toyed with a pen, turning it over and over, and stars danced from her hand to run along the walls. “Perhaps you could pass on a message to him from me?”

  Finn inclined his head to signify that he was still hearing her words, even though they were not making a lot of sense.

  “Tell him I am obliged to him. I was about to do something—” she took a lawyer’s pause, as if hunting about for less incriminating language “—ill advised, that night. Something I might have found it difficult to live with afterwards. He prevented me, and I am grateful. For his sake as well as for yours, take my advice and plead ‘not guilty.’”

  Finn looked to his solicitor for an explanation, but Mr. Todd seemed as lost as he was. “Well, you’re my legal counsel. Counsel me.”

  Todd tightened the knot of his tie. Loosened it again. “I’m bemused,” he said at last, slowly. “But it’s always been my experience that when a judge gives you a firm hint to do something, it’s to your benefit to do so. I would therefore advise you to change your plea and enter ‘not guilty’ after all.”

  Back in court. It was now a little past noon, though the light through the high, paned windows was so grey it could have been dusk. Finn caught Michael’s insistent glance—What’s going on?—and answered it with an eye roll—I don’t know.

  Was he really going to risk his chance for leniency on the word of the woman who was responsible for him being here in the first place? He’d never been the most trusting of men, and it went against everything he was to lay his fate so gently in an enemy’s hands.

  But she owed Michael, she said. She owed him a clean conscience; she wanted to repay him. And maybe Finn wanted to help with that. He’d never managed any other thank-you to Michael for the rescue.

  “To this charge, Mr. Fintan Hulme, how do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”

  He stood. The weight of the courtroom roof diffused through the grimy air and pressed on his back. He was the centre of attention, the hero of the play, given his three seconds in the spotlight. Why not do something startling with it, after all?

  “Not guilty,” he lied, firmly. He hoped convincingly.

  Lady Harcombe smiled. Michael half rose from his seat, looking like he wanted to shake Finn till his teeth rattled.

  “My colleagues and I have reviewed the evidence carefully, and we are agreed—” Shifty looks and surly mouths on either side of her. Agreed was obviously stretching it. Coerced into keeping silent might have been closer. “—that there is simply not enough evidence in this case to take a prosecution forward. Accordingly the case is dismissed as ‘no case to answer,’ and the defendant is released without a stain on his character. Mr. Hulme? You may go. And I hope never to see you here again.”

  He was too dazed, his expectations too undercut to react at first. Todd hustled him out of the courtroom before the prosecution lawyer could even start on the angry outburst that seemed to be brewing beneath his reddening face.

  “Well, that went better than I envisaged.” Todd allowed himself to be tugged over to Michael’s side. “I suggest you two get out of here while the Lady of the Manor lays down the law to my opponent. I’ll send my bill to you, shall I, Mr. May?”

  “Do.”

  Finn hadn’t asked himself where the solicitor had come from, assumed he was provided by the state. He made an attempt to pull himself together, floored still by generosity and good luck, only partially following the flow of life, with gaps in his concentration and his understanding.

  Now Todd was over by the courtroom door, hissing in whispers with the prosecutor, obviously saying something placating by the tapping-down hand gestures. And gradually the sense of the morning cracked open like a seed in Finn’s chest. It put out leaves of lightness through his arms and his legs so that he was buoyant. It pushed a stem of astonishment and joy and relief up his spine and flowered in his head into laughter.

  “Did you hear that?” There was before him the most handsome man he had ever seen, with a touch of that Italianate bad boy thing that all the girls loved. A mature James Dean. Maybe a little too short in the leg for a movie idol, but close enough for Finn. He grabbed Michael by the biceps and allowed himself to be picked up and twirled for joy. “Did you hear it? Not a stain on my character.”

  Onlookers on dusty chairs lifted their gazes to him, resentful or bovine or happy for him according to their natures, as he dangled with his feet an inch off the floor
in Michael’s crushingly overjoyed embrace, and he cut off all the many things he meant to say until they were in private. I love you. She did this for you—as a present. Look at you, you saved me again. Those things weren’t for these people to hear.

  “Michael, acushla,” he said instead, with the happiness shaking his voice, and the relief in his bones like warm water. “We’re done here. Let’s go home.”

  It was still only barely the afternoon when they reached the shop, but Finn locked the door behind them and left the Shut sign firmly in the window, sagging against Michael’s sturdy frame as soon as the world was securely outside.

  “It’s over, then.”

  Michael slid an arm under his jacket, under his jumper, the heat of his palm cradling Finn’s hip through the thin cotton of Finn’s shirt. It felt real, solid again, as touches had not felt this past week.

  “Should I go?”

  The guy was a bundle of insecurities, but Finn had known that from the moment he first walked in the shop. They were insecurities Finn found endearing. He turned, letting Michael’s hand skim around his waist to come to rest in the hollow of his back. Time now, nothing but time ahead of him, time enough to slow down and feel the prickles on his skin that radiated out from Michael’s touch. Time to appreciate the way his blood yearned towards the other man like a magnet to its pole.

  Michael’s uncertain gaze grew warmer at Finn’s expression. Finn moistened his lips and watched it dip there, as Michael’s mouth softened in response. He tilted his head. Michael echoed him unconsciously as he stepped in, the hand on his back pulling him in close.

  The kiss began gently enough, almost chaste in its soft drag of hot silk skin across his mouth. The low ache of desire in his belly pumped through his veins and made the air hot around him as he licked along the seam of Michael’s lips, pushing with his tongue for entrance. Michael opened to him with a gasp, his whole body yielding under Finn’s pressure, giving up control to him, as Michael leaned back on the door to support himself and surrendered.

  Finn pushed Michael’s coat off his shoulders, rucked his shirt and sweater up under his arms as he filled both hands with Michael’s back, running them up his spine, kneading his fingers into the big muscles of the man’s shoulders. Michael groaned in that deep voice of his, the one that was like being caressed all over by rough suede, and his hands slid down to cup Finn’s arse and pull him tighter.

  “Stay,” Finn gasped, gloriously crushed, with Michael as hard against him as he was, not quite sure which of them was in charge of this and not giving a fuck either way. “Stay forever.”

  Michael’s hands dipped a little lower, and then he was being picked up—and he was never going to get tired of that, of that casual strength, that promise of the possibility of being overwhelmed. He wound his legs around Michael’s waist and kissed him harder, kissed him all the way up the stairs and into the bedroom.

  They had the whole afternoon, and Michael took it slow, keeping Finn’s wrists pinned in one hand so he couldn’t touch himself, working into him gently, slowly, and rocking together until Finn thought he would go mad with need. Michael supported his hips on one arm, picking them up, angling Finn so that he ploughed through stars with every stroke, and when Finn finally got his hands free, he scrabbled against Michael’s back and left long red welts that spoke of ownership.

  He lost time, fracturing apart under too much sensation. The light dimmed as the sun dipped, and he tightened up under the waves of pleasure until every breath hovered on the edge of pain and he felt scored out, hot, tender, intolerable. It was still too gentle, and he couldn’t quite . . .

  “Please.” Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, and he loved it but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t wait any longer. It had to be now or he would die. “Please!”

  Michael’s hand slid down from where it had been bruising his wrist, closed on Finn’s biceps, his thumb digging in. Pain flowered from that spot like the opening of a new universe, gathering the pleasure and amplifying it, pushing it up, harder, until it transformed into something religious, into true ecstasy that washed him out of his body altogether and let him sleep.

  Finn woke to find night had fallen and the yellow light of streetlamps was gilding Michael’s eyelashes as he lay on his side beside Finn, smiling at him. Michael’s hazel eyes looked black as the night sky in that light, warm in the quiet between them.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello.” He smiled back, and stretched, his body sore and tired and glowing. “What’s the time?”

  “It’s only about four. Are you okay?”

  Four o’clock in the afternoon, and he was waking, his heavy limbs entangled with those of his bedfellow, and absolutely no intention of getting out of bed again until tomorrow. How sybaritic, how delightful.

  “I am positively splendid. What was it that you did there, at the end? Because that definitely worked for me.”

  Michael, bless him, managed to look embarrassed. He shrugged. “You said you liked pain. I didn’t want to do anything that would harm you, so I thought I’d try pressure points. Very controllable, not a lot of risk, and you seemed to like it, so . . .”

  “It still bothers you, the pain thing?” Finn asked, winding himself a little more closely into Michael’s embrace, settling their weight so that they leaned into one another.

  Michael kissed the crow’s-foot at the side of his eye, and then the corner of his mouth. “I don’t get it. But I like to make you happy, and it’s hot to me, watching how much it turns you on. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem for us, do you?”

  No, he didn’t. But he also didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He’d had it with serious for today. The plan for the rest of the evening included food, a shared shower, more naps, more cuddling and, perhaps if he was up to it again by the end of the evening, more sex. This morning had been angst enough for the rest of the year.

  A lock of Michael’s hair curled over his ear now; it was getting shaggy. Finn tugged on it because he could. “You know what’s a problem in this relationship? It’s the fact that I’m starving. Get out to that kitchen and make me a sandwich.”

  Michael burst out laughing, shoved him in the chest, and wriggled away to pull on boxers and slide out into the cold. “As a one-time celebration for the end of your life of crime, okay. But don’t think I’m making a habit of it.”

  He padded away, leaving Finn to wallow in warmth and softness and semisleep. Lights flicked on in the kitchen and the hall. Finn almost called out to him to make food for the ghost too, but remembered in time that he had lost them. He hoped they were well. Maybe the shelters were opening, this close to Christmas, and the ghost too had a warm place to sleep. He hoped so.

  “The book club boys think I’m making you up,” he said, as Michael brought in hummus and olive sandwiches on ciabatta bread, and two cups of coffee held in one hand. “Every week I tell them you’re coming and you never arrive. I’m thinking a Christmas party, and you’d better show up or I’m replacing you with that hot farmer with the shotgun.”

  Michael sipped at his own coffee, trying unsuccessfully to smother his smile. It was the smile Finn liked best out of all his expressions: sweet and gentle, surprised by joy.

  “Well, I can’t have that. I’ll be there.”

  Two weeks later, and they were into December. The keel of the boat was complete and the skin of her almost finished except for caulking. She was a handsome-looking thing already, slightly wider, slightly more comfortable looking than the average narrowboat. He took a series of photos of her with his phone, intending them for the internet, where he was blogging about the build in an attempt to drum up future custom.

  Sarah caught him as he was stashing the tools in their safe, the metal of the locking box burning his fingers with cold, and his breath coming like steam in the blue twilight air. She had wrapped the coverlet from her bed around herself, a padded cone of scarlet quilt topped with the ruffled tight black curls of her hair.

  Coat
for Christmas, he thought, as her small hand emerged from the wrapping and offered him a fiver.

  “Rent for November, Mr. May.”

  It probably wasn’t appropriate to be filled with pride for her. Her renaissance was all her own doing—well, with a little help from Tai—but he accepted the fiver like she was the Queen offering him a knighthood.

  “That’s fantastic. Thank you.” He heaved a deep breath, wasn’t sure what she would make of this, or what Jenny and Finn might make of it either, but damn it, she was a child still. She should not spend Christmas on her own in the boat, watching all the families come together without her. “You got plans for Christmas?”

  Sarah stepped back towards the open air—the shed was wall-less on one side, to facilitate the movement of boats in and out. She usually talked to him here, where it was impossible for anyone to block the exit. “I . . .” She studied her feet. “No, I won’t bother anyone. I’m fine.”

  “Tai didn’t ask you?”

  She felt happy enough with him to glance up at him with an expression that told him he was an idiot. “They don’t do Christmas, Mr. May. They’re Taoists.”

  He laughed. “I guess I should have thought of that. Then do you want to have Christmas dinner with me?”

  Her eyes widened, she took another step back, and he rushed to clarify, “With me and my boyfriend and my friend Jenny from London. We could even . . .” It was not quite the cosy Christmas he’d envisaged, but hopefully there would be other years for that. “We could go to a restaurant, where there would be other people around.”

  She scuffed the floor with the toe of her new shoe and looked torn. He knew he didn’t deserve her trust, shouldn’t push for it, but he hoped for it nevertheless.

  “I suppose I am your niece, after all,” she said at length, making him smile. “It would look a bit odd if I didn’t.”