Nikolas broke the ice by mentioning to Ben that he was sure his friend would be more than happy to help him move all his things—after all, had Ben not helped perform this task for Tim once? When his long-term relationship was over. Failed.
This naturally led on to Ben having to explain to Tim what was happening—what he was doing.
Nikolas observed the professor during Ben’s characteristic, stuttering, incoherent, yet infuriatingly endearing ramble with as much concentration as he’d ever given anyone in his entire life, and having been a sniper for a while, before his more peculiar talents had been noticed and rewarded, Nikolas could concentrate on a target very well indeed. Was Tim Watson thinking back over the unswerving devotion Ben had always shown to their relationship? All the expressions of love? All the promises of commitment? Was he recalling the almost suicidal grief Ben had experienced when he’d discovered Jackson Keane in his bed? Was he thinking about all the lies and deceptions Ben had put up with over the years for nothing more than genuine attachment? Was he remembering a burn so bright, a heat so intense that with it he and Ben had set the whole world on fire? Was he trying to work out where it had all gone and what the fuck he was supposed to do about it?
Nikolas watched the man’s blue eyes and concluded that Tim Watson was indeed pondering all these things.
The professor then went up in Nikolas’s estimation. He dipped his head in brief acceptance of all Ben had said, as if any of the disjointed half-baked philosophy had made any sense, and made a gesture for Ben to precede him to the door. But as Ben passed, Tim shot a look to him. There was nothing more to the moment than that, but Nikolas knew.
Draft.
The workers took a break for tea after an hour.
Nikolas noted that Ben didn’t ask if he could use the kettle or drink the milk—which he did from the carton, gulping down his usual pint or two before actually slopping smaller sloshes into the mugs—but his mind was clearly on other things, so Nikolas didn’t take the opportunity to ask him for some money for the supplies. It might be the last fresh milk Ben had access to for some time, given the state of his next abode.
It was decidedly awkward around the table.
Tim eventually asked Ben if he had a TV and mentioned that he and Squeezy had two. The offer was implicit.
And after that, when Ben had replied that he didn’t think the cottage he was going to had electricity, it seemed impossible for Tim not to mention the money situation. Nikolas was holding his breath, waiting to see what would happen—if Tim would offer to support Ben in his hour of need. He didn’t, which was intriguing, as Tim had more than enough money—his, so Nikolas knew exactly how much the man possessed.
For the first time ever, he was keen to get one of Ben’s friends on his own and question him. He wanted that little glance explained now. He needed to gauge the strength of this man’s support. Although this quiet professor was one of Ben’s best friends, they were completely dissimilar. Ben, as Nikolas had once told him, was a force of nature. He was overt, physically and emotionally. Tim was very rarely heard, but when he did say something it was always pertinent.
Nikolas was wary of a cosy chat with Tim though, still smarting from Ben’s assertion that the man was cleverer than him. In the past, if this had been mentioned, he’d have crowed privately, “But who’s got Ben Rider in his bed? Not Tim fucking Watson.” Wasn’t that ironic now—that vaunting boast? Nikolas grimaced and recalled a sun-streaked classroom in a distant country where in another language he’d read about an apostate angel vaunting aloud through his pain, racked with deep despair…Even at age eleven he’d thought Milton’s Satan had got a pretty shoddy deal, and he’d only been kicked out of God’s presence. He however had lost Ben Rider…
In truth, Nikolas had expected Ben to fold by now. But then he’d not factored in the newly hopeless angle. God was sneaky like that. He had a lot of creepy fans he could call on to fight his battles for him.
No worries—it appeared as if Nikolas had Tim Watson on his side now.
Unfortunately, Ben wasn’t as stupid as he sometimes gave the impression he was, and he didn’t leave the two of them alone, despite the awkwardness of the situation. He clearly felt he was being ganged up on and seemed to have decided it was better to have no one speaking than to be talked about behind his back. Nikolas, therefore, couldn’t confirm his new ally, he could only watch as Tim finished helping Ben down with his things and loaded them into his large off-road vehicle—the one Ben had bought for Tim in a superbly generous moment. How ironic. Again.
Nikolas, obviously, was too poorly to help with any of the evening’s activities. He sat with Radulf who wouldn’t have assisted even if he could.
Radulf was still sitting with Nikolas when Ben was done and came for him.
Lead in hand, Ben hesitated. “There’s not a lot of room left in the car, but he can sit—”
“You can’t have Radulf.”
“What?” Ben sat down, running the leather through his fingers. “But he’s…” Obviously this wasn’t easy to finish, so he was rather forced to leave it dangling.
“He’s almost totally blind, Ben. How’s he going to manage that in a gloomy cottage? He needs the warmth and the light of our—of the big house. He’s too old to live a different life now. I think he’s earned this one.” Nikolas was saying a lot more here than a comment about the dog, but he was unsure if Ben was in the mood to hear it.
Apparently, Ben wasn’t so self-absorbed that he didn’t get the oblique reference. He bit his lower lip. “I’m sorry.”
“So you keep saying. Radulf stays with me.”
“But what about me? I need him!” This was so unlike Ben that Nikolas’s brows rose. The uncharacteristic plea distracted him so much that he almost missed the fact that the first sign of genuine remorse had finally come about because of the dog and not him—Ben had almost folded on the thought of being alone without the dog, not him.
But then he reckoned he wasn’t the only one who could use the dog as a metaphor. Tough. “Do they allow dogs in church?”
It was a step too far. Too blatant, and even Ben, as blinkered as he’d been to all Nikolas’s other provocations, saw it. “You think this is funny! You think I’m doing this deliberately for…attention! To hurt you!” He rose and leant up close and personal to Nikolas’s face. “I’m doing this for you!”
Nikolas licked his lips. “Thank you. I’m appreciating your concern.”
“Oh—” Nikolas waited for the fuck off, which didn’t seem to him very Christian, and if he’d heard it would have cheered him up no end, but Ben recovered his dignity and sat down. “I promised God if he saved your life I’d be his. Live a pure life. He did, he brought you back from the dead! And I know that means we’ll be together in the next life.”
“Do I get a say in that?”
Ben jerked his head back a little. “What do you mean?”
“What if I’ve had enough of you in this one?”
“You don’t mean that.”
Nikolas scratched his cheek and shrugged. His shrugs had been irritating Ben for years now, no reason to stop a good thing.
“Maybe…you could…why don’t you come with me, Nik? To the church. You’d see then. It would all become clear to you. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but I’m probably not explaining it very well. Martin could.”
Nikolas’s immediate response to this had to be repressed, and while he was doing this he gave Radulf some particularly deep rubs behind his ear. When he was calmer, he actually thought it was a very good idea. He would like to meet Martin. And he needed to regroup a little with Ben.
“So, this is the end of an era.” Nikolas sighed. “You’re moving out…It only seems like—actually, it seems like a very long time since I sent you that text with the address. Do you remember?”
Ben turned his head away.
Ack, he was a bad man. But without Ben, who was going to call him on it?
“A lot has changed.”
Still just the profile and eyes fixed determinedly to the far wall. Never mind, Nikolas had always enjoyed Ben side-on. He’d studied that view of Ben for many years in the car as they’d driven through their shared life. “For example, you know I’m not actually Nikolas now—that’s a pretty big change. I wonder why I never reverted back to Aleksey as I wanted to…Oh, I remember, you said it would be odd. For you. Well, I suppose I can now. That would be a good start, a new beginning. Aleksey. I was just remembering being Aleksey…”
A long blink, so Ben was listening.
“But I think you’ve changed more than I have. As I told Stefan—do you recall my son? Of course you do. As I told him—at a very apt moment—I never really change. I just call myself by different names. But you, Ben, I think you’ve become an entirely different man from the one I fell in love with.”
He couldn’t keep it up. He’d rather take the carving knife from the block and dig out his own heart than hurt Ben.
Nikolas sighed again, genuinely, and in some pain now. “I need to rest. See yourself out.” He rose, and without any prompting, Radulf followed him through the door.
Two on his side.
None on God’s.
It was looking good.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nikolas spent a few more days in London, sleeping and eating, and making Radulf play dead. He’d had a wicked thought and was putting it into practice. If the dog could be taught this amusing trick for bear, why not for other words? So far it was working quite satisfactorily. He’d also taken the old dog to a specialist, an ophthalmic veterinarian, for a thorough examination.
He’d almost convinced himself that with the judicious application of enough money Radulf’s eyesight could be restored. He needed to have that reassurance of the power of his money…his power. He wasn’t dumb enough not to see what he actually needed to prove, but apparently, in this case, as with Ben’s, being a billionaire wasn’t enough.
He left with a leaflet on how to help a blind dog live a normal life.
He smiled faintly at the suggestion that he wear a bell, so the dog could hear him coming. Then his mood plummeted when he thought about how silent the house would now be. How quiet his whole existence would be. Ben was the one who brought everything to life—bursting in from a run, always active, restless, wanting to do things. The hub. The beating heart of their lives.
He liked the idea from the helpful advice of putting wind-chimes up throughout the grounds, although Radulf was actually pretty adept at getting himself around them now—beating a frequent path to Babushka’s for treats whenever the mood took him.
The last suggestion made Nikolas hesitate and read it again.
It was something he’d never considered. He bent and put the solution to Radulf.
§§§
They returned to Devon on Thursday, the first day he’d felt well enough to make the drive himself and he was extremely pleased with how easy he found it. He wasn’t even tired when he arrived and so he immediately went to the stable and saddled up. After he’d pondered the half-empty closet for a while, that is.
It was nearly March, and the weather had taken that unpredictable turn so familiar to the English—a promise of an early, hot spring, flicking back overnight into a bitter winter with snow predicted. Bitter, of course, being a relative term. It was forty degrees warmer than Svalbard, so Nikolas wasn’t complaining.
He rode slowly so Radulf could keep alongside. They weren’t going their usual route to Drover Tor. Nikolas never went to Drover Tor now. Peat was a superb preservative, and he needed that soft Dartmoor imprisonment to hold securely against the restorative powers of guilt and memory.
Nikolas had another destination in mind anyway.
Coincidentally, the Duchy cottage lay in easy riding distance of the glass house, only a two hour canter north through some of the finest scenery in the world. Very pleasant for a frosty Thursday.
Radulf was just as familiar with this route, and slouched happily along next to the large horse. After an hour, they came to a tor which had a wide shallow basin to the eastern side, which Nikolas always called Radulf’s Hollow, not because the old dog liked the area, but because he steadfastly refused to enter it, thus only adding to Nikolas’s conviction that the dog’s blindness was a complete fraud being perpetrated on them all. How the dog knew they’d arrived at this spot was always a mystery to Nikolas, but he watched now, bemused, as Radulf approached the bracken which grew on the lip of the bowl, hesitated, paused for a moment, then veered off in a head-down skulking attitude to take the longer path around the back of the rocks. There was nothing in the bowl except the occasional remains of a campfire, made, Nikolas assumed, by stray campers on the moors, but, regardless, Radulf wouldn’t go in.
Nikolas wasn’t about to call the dog on this.
One day they would discuss the bog. Not yet. Nikolas wasn’t ready to do so, and he was pretty sure the old boy wasn’t either. But despite encouraging Ben to assume that Radulf had been tossed by Stefan into the mud to thus give the impression to them he’d just stumbled in, Nikolas privately didn’t think this. Radulf was too heavy to lift and throw.
Nikolas believed that Stefan had faked his own sinking in the bog and that Radulf, given his spirit and his nature, had gone in selflessly to help.
One day Nikolas would ask him.
One day, who knew, Radulf might tell him.
So for now he allowed these small quirks in the dog’s behaviour. Who knew what he sensed out in these remote places on Dartmoor? Who knew what he saw? He was blind to the things of this world, for sure. But what did that mean? Nikolas had just looked into an empty closet and seen a whole world burning, an end of an era, an apocalypse. Anyone else might have just seen a forlorn rail. It all depended on your perspective.
They arrived to find Ben in the yard, chopping wood.
It was more than awkward at first.
Ben straightened from his work, bare chest gleaming with sweat. Nikolas dismounted, cold, invigorated. The physical pull between them was so strong it was a tangible presence, as real as the steaming horse nudging him, the dog joyously sniffing something disgusting. Nikolas wondered what Ben would do if he held out his hand and returned his life to him. But this temptation made Nikolas frown as a thought occurred to him that hadn’t up until this point, and on its unpleasant jarring in his head, he lost the moment before it had begun, shivered, and asked, “Can I go in? It’s too cold for Radulf out here.”
Ben nodded, took Nikolas’s horse to secure it in the tumbled lean-to at the side of the yard, and Nikolas went into the gloom of the cottage.
The range was lit, but it gave out no heat. The place was freezing and damp. Ben had his army roll mat on the stone flags in front of the inadequate stove, his possessions scattered around, as there was no place to store them. Tins of baked beans, opened and with forks left in them, were on the table.
None of this helped Nikolas’s mood.
The thought had occurred to him in the yard that he had actually made a very grievous error—that he’d been right: it had all been too easy. God was laughing at him and his stupidity.
He had concentrated on the wrong thing. Ben’s lifestyle. It had been his old defence mechanisms kicking in again. Ben Rider couldn’t possibly love him for himself; he only loved his life with a billionaire, which was an entirely different thing. So when Ben had made his dramatic announcement, Nikolas had withdrawn the privileges to protect his own feelings, so he didn’t have to face the fact that Ben might be rejecting him alone.
But now, what would happen if he offered that hand of reconciliation? What would Ben be accepting?
If Ben came home, what would he come home for?
How genuine would Ben’s capitulation be?
If he’d left Ben in the glass house, in his life, with his friends and his family, then his return would have been purely for him. For love.
Nikolas felt an uncharacteristic faltering in his certainty about—well, about
everything.
He sensed Ben at the door, then it swung open, and he came in with an armful of newly chopped wood. “I swapped my boxed set of The Walking Dead for a load of pine and an axe from a guy down the hill. I’m sorry it’s so cold in here. I’ll put this lot on and then—what’s wrong?”
Nikolas stood and went to poke at a stain on the wall, his back to Ben. “You can’t stay here, Ben. You’ll get sick. Please, let me rent somewhere for—”
“No! Why would you do that? It’s not right. You wouldn’t do it for—”
“Ben! I support everyone! Tim, Michael, Jackson, our family—everyone! Why not you, out of friendship’s sake, if nothing else. You can’t live like this.”
“I think this is just how it should be. It’s a test. It would have been too easy otherwise.”
Nikolas stopped his examination of the invisible mark. “What do you mean, too easy?”
Ben fumbled some of the wood he was jamming into the stove. He appeared to have realised he’d made a mistake. “I didn’t mean that. I’m not thinking straight. You know I can’t out-argue you.”
“I wasn’t aware we were arguing.”
“There you go. Your clever tongue does me in every time.” That was an even more unfortunate thing to say, and Nikolas saw the realisation of this creep slowly across Ben’s perfect features, causing a rising of colour high on his cheekbones. He would have let this distract him, but he was a little focused on Ben’s earlier comment.
“Just leaving me would have been easy?”
Ben rose. “Stop it. I didn’t mean that. If you knew…”
“What? If I knew what, Ben?”
Ben came close once more, his usual smell of musky, expensive cologne now more earthy—pine and frost and moorland air. “How much this is hurting me. If you knew what this is doing to me you’d…”
“Then let me put you up somewhere—”
John Wiltshire - [More Heat Than the Sun 07] Page 18
