“Joshua Behrens,” he said.
They shook.
“Warden Fields.”
They were outside. Joshua asked if he knew the Black Bull Tavern in Whitstable. Warden recalled it from his walk through town.
“I’ll be there about eight this evening if you’d care to join me for a drink.”
It was hardly even an invitation—just a notice where he’d be should Warden happen to be there at the same time. Joshua smiled again. The sun opened and closed like an iris behind the clouds. Warden was aware of shaded feelings, like a hand sheltering a candle from the wind, as he regarded the knife-like features of the man beside him making the landscape around them seem vaguely silly or insignificant in some way.
19
After supper, Warden walked to the beach. The sun set as he watched fishing vessels towing their cargoes homeward, weighed down in the waves as the light thinned and seagulls followed like black flags in the eddies of the restless engines.
The Black Bull was around the corner from Island Wall. The tavern was a mock up of a ship’s quarters, with life buoys on the walls and portholes for windows. Rough-hewn logs supported the structure filled with cheerful patrons. Warden spotted Joshua leaning against a post, pint in hand, talking to two young women. He had on the same leather jacket he’d worn on the train, with military fatigues, a grey wool sweater and a red bandanna around his neck. His hands were clothed in black, fingerless gloves. As he talked he tilted his head, locking eyes with his listeners.
He saw Warden and waved him over. Warden was surprised by his eagerness after the casual invitation. Joshua introduced his companions, villagers named Wendy and Hillary. He explained how he’d met Warden exploring the famous cathedral, not mentioning the train incident of the previous day.
“Ohhh, it’s a lovely place, isn’t it?” cooed the one named Wendy.
It was lovely, they agreed.
“Are you American?” Hillary asked.
“He’s from Canada,” Joshua said, surprising him since Warden hadn’t mentioned it. “You can hear it in his accent.”
“Are you?” Wendy exclaimed. “It sounds like a lovely place.”
Warden wondered if she meant in the same way as the cathedral.
“I have an uncle in Canada,” Joshua said. “We haven’t heard from him for years—not since I was a kid.”
“Why don’t you try phoning him?” Hillary suggested. “Doesn’t he have a phone?”
“Well, I would but he’s a deaf-mute,” Joshua said, grinning at Warden over their heads. “So he couldn’t hear it ringing if I did phone. And even if he managed to pick it up at the right time he couldn’t say anything.”
He tilted his head and laughed at his own joke.
“Oh, you!” she said in exasperation. She turned to Warden. “He’s always been like this—even in school. Always the cheeky one.”
The women plied Warden with questions. Others drifted over to say hello. Joshua seemed to be well known. Eventually, Wendy and Hillary and the others departed, leaving Joshua and Warden alone. Warden found Joshua surprisingly easy to talk to, considering his experiences at their previous encounters.
“What brings someone like you to Whitstable?” Warden asked.
“What? You don’t think I belong here?” Joshua said mockingly. “Actually, I grew up around here. My mother still lives outside of town.”
He put down his glass and eyed Warden.
“And what’s a good-looking Canadian doing in England?” he asked.
“Working as a fashion model.”
Joshua scowled. “Fashion—it figures,” he said. “With a face like that, I mean.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“Fashion’s a rather objectionable pursuit, to my mind. It’s self-serving and communicates nothing. It’s fascist to choose the most physically perfect and try to make the rest of us adhere to a set rule of thumb.”
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Warden said. “Models are chosen primarily for a size, not a look. We’re creating standards, not ideals. And no one says you have to adhere to them. You obviously don’t, judging by your appearance.”
“I don’t need people telling me what to think or how to dress.”
“And what exactly do you do, before you cross-examine me any further?”
“I’m a pop singer,” he answered casually.
“Is that why the counter-culture image?” Warden asked.
“That’s not what it’s all about.”
“But you obviously create your own standards of fashion.”
Joshua smiled at having been caught out. “You might say so.”
“So that makes you a cultural rebel. And what’s pop music besides cultural fashion?”
“Don’t go too far, mate—I don’t accept that. Some music may be nothing more than a fad. My music’s very political. It has a different intent altogether.”
“Intellectual fashion, then.”
“That may be, but it’s not done out of any egotistical, self-serving interests.”
Joshua was grinning at the counterattack. Warden suspected it was one of the few he’d ever encountered.
“I think I might just like you,” Joshua said, raising his glass with a tattered glove. “You’re cheeky in your own way.”
Behind them a rowdy group had broken into song, stamping their way through You’ll Never Walk Alone. They were joined by others singing in drunken comradely fashion till a good proportion of the bar had joined in.
Joshua scowled. “That’s the type of nationalistic machismo that causes fights at football games. There was a good, bloody row a while back and a lot of people got killed over it. You express your enthusiasm by making a lot of noise and being overly fond of drinking. Then one day you end up in a fight and kill someone over a football match.”
For a second, Warden thought he might confront the crowd. The singing died to a rowdy laugh amid hearty backslapping. Joshua’s rancour faded with it. He placed a hand on Warden’s forearm.
“Are you going to invite me back to your place for tea?” he said. “Or do you have company?”
“I’m all alone, actually.”
“Good—that makes things less complicated, doesn’t it?”
“I haven’t got any tea to offer you, but I bought some coffee today.”
“Sounds barbaric, but I accept.”
They left the bar and headed for the cottage. Joshua walked sturdily alongside Warden.
“What if I hadn’t asked you to come back?” Warden said.
“I would’ve come anyway.”
Joshua began singing an amusing refrain about being small in a world where only tallness counts, his voice a warm husky baritone in the foggy air. To Warden he seemed to have an uprightness about him that had nothing to do with everyday manners and morals, or the oppressive respectability by which the masses conducted their lives. It was a strength that stood alone. Joshua stopped as they passed the beach, invisible in the darkness.
“Here—let’s have a quick row, shall we?”
Warden could just make out the long piers extending ahead of them.
“Do you have a boat?”
Joshua smiled. “We’ll annex one,” he said.
Warden followed him over the rocky beach to the docks. The silhouettes of boats creaked and groaned in the darkness as though talking in their sleep.
“This one’ll do,” Joshua said, indicating a small skiff. “Climb aboard, mate.”
Warden stepped in. Joshua slipped the knot off the landing, pushing the boat out and leaping aboard at the last moment. They slid ahead in darkness. Joshua settled across from Warden and took hold of the oars, swinging them in an arc above his head. The boat floated noiselessly over the surface. Joshua’s measured breathing matched his strokes as he took them in a slowly widening circle. He stopped rowing and sat listening.
“Do you like this feeling? This nothingness? It’s utterly empty—free from everything.”
&nbs
p; “It’s peaceful,” Warden said.
Joshua bent over the bow and pulled up a handful of freezing water dripping through his fingers.
“The ocean is immense. It never asks you for anything—not your name, not what you’re thinking. I think it would be possible to be totally content out here forever. What do you think?”
“I’d get hungry.”
Joshua laughed a deep laugh. It was the first time Warden had heard it clearly.
“You’re different,” he said. “You’re not like the rest of those pretty boys. I felt it when I first saw you. I like you.”
Warden wanted to say something reassuring in reply, but the moment passed. Joshua’s silhouette straightened suddenly.
“We’ll go back now.”
Now Warden felt rude, as though Joshua had offered him something genuine and he hadn’t accepted it. He watched Joshua take up the oars again, completing the circle and returning where they’d started.
Inside the cottage, Warden lit a fire. He went to the kitchen, returning with coffee. The room was flushed with heat. Warden picked up a poker and pushed the logs farther back in the grate to reduce the flare-up.
“Why don’t you stop puttering around like a servant and come and sit with me?” Joshua said.
Warden turned, poker in hand. “Why don’t you sit on this?” he said, but he came over and stretched his legs across a chair. Joshua lifted his own legs and settled them across Warden’s. Warden looked up in amusement.
“May I?” Joshua remarked ironically.
“Go right ahead—I like my friends to feel they can abuse me.”
“You model types are all alike.”
Joshua surprised him by asking about his friends and family. Warden sketched in a few details of his work in the last year, and how he came to be in England. Joshua talked about his life in London and a problematic younger brother who stayed with him. His mother lived outside Whitstable on a small estate. Their father had died when he was young. He had an older brother no one had heard from in years and a renegade sister who’d married an American and lived with her husband in Los Angeles, travelling back and forth. They were staying at his place now.
Flames hissed and threw shadows around the room. Warden felt Joshua’s gaze on him.
“So am I staying the night with you?” he asked gently.
Warden turned to him. “That’s just what I was wondering.”
Joshua followed him upstairs where they quickly pulled off each other’s shirts and sweaters, letting them fall like discarded skins, shivering in the cool air. Joshua’s hands were warm and forceful.
“You’re nice to look at—so lovely to touch,” he said.
It was the first time Warden had been touched by anyone since leaving Italy. Joshua was rough and passionate as he explored Warden’s body. There was a murky odour, almost vinegary, emanating from his hard white flesh. Not sweet like Valentino’s bronzed, flower-scented skin. Warden suspected he abstained from using deodorants for some vague political reason and washed only when he felt like it.
They came together in the dark, dispelling moons and displacing planets. Lips caressed the soft down of Warden’s throat, moving upwards in search of a mouth. His body accommodated Joshua’s hands, the darkness dissolving about them as if they were lit from within.
Warden felt smooth skin beneath his fingers as muscles swelled and strained. Warm lips brushed his, falling over the periphery of sight with the gravely stroking of stubble across his chest. Ripe fruit glistened, swollen and taut beneath marbled navels. Flesh shuddered in a sudden trickle of pearls on the tongue like the weeping of the surf, till they lay shipwrecked, their bodies creased and tangled among the sheets. In the faint light from the window, their chests heaved with the joy of spent need, the languorous surfeit spilling over onto the sheets.
20
Ivan and Rebekah were in the drawing room when Warden returned. Rebekah sat polishing chrome studs on a long leather strap. Ivan, his blue locks transformed to a flaming red, talked animatedly on the telephone.
“Hello, everyone!”
“Hello!” Ivan said, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. He plumped up his hair with his free hand. “How d’you like me new ’do?”
“Stunning!” Warden said with a wink.
“You’re on another cover,” Rebekah informed him.
He set his bag down and went to the coffee table where his face gazed back at him from the framed ellipsis of a magazine. He picked it up, trying to recall what photography session had yielded the image, then let it drop with a splash.
“So jaded by success already?” Rebekah asked.
He smiled and shook his head. “No—just thinking.”
“Mmmm—I thought your trip would have cured you of that.”
“How was it?” Ivan asked. “Did you have a nice time?”
“Wonderful—I had a great time! I wish you’d both been there with me.”
“You were supposed to be resting, not having a great time,” Rebekah admonished.
“Oh, it was very relaxing.”
“Meet anybody interesting?” Ivan asked.
“Yes, I did, in fact.”
“Oh? Do tell!” Rebekah said, her fingers continuing their rubbing motion. “I smell an adventure.”
“It’s nothing, really. I met someone and we spent some time together. I had a very nice time.”
“Nice time my eye,” Rebekah snorted. “You had a fling—I can see it in your eyes. Now you’re blushing, even.”
Ivan placed his hand over the mouthpiece again.
“I can’t even meet men in London and you find them in remote fishing villages. It’s absolutely tragic!” He removed his hand from over the phone. “No, no—my place isn’t big enough for boxing, I’m afraid,” he said to the person on the other end.
“It’s his new business,” Rebekah whispered in answer to Warden’s puzzled look. “He’s joined some sort of male escort agency.” She held up the object in her hand. “He’s got me polishing all sorts of things I don’t even know what they’re used for.”
“Yes, darling, I have whips and chains,” Ivan said, rolling his eyes at Warden. “But believe me, I can get much more inventive than that.”
“And he gave out our number without telling me,” Rebekah said crossly. “Now he wants me to answer the phone with, ‘I’m your transformer’ or some such thing, in case it’s for him. What if my mother calls? How can I explain that to her?”
“Well, you’ll just have to come over and find out then, won’t you?” Ivan said, and hung up.
He gestured at Warden loosely with his hand.
“Oh, everything’s so difficult these days,” he said. “Thank Goddess, you’re back. We’ve missed having a man about the house, haven’t we, Bekah?”
“He’s been having a fling without telling us,” Rebekah said, as though disapproving of an errant child.
“Naughty boy,” Ivan said, reaching over and tweaking his ear.
“I didn’t say anything about having a fling and you two practically have me married off to someone you’ve never even seen!”
“Well, we think it’s wonderful, of course,” Rebekah said. She looked up from her work. “Just think—if you’d never come here at all and stayed in North America you would’ve ended up married to some woman you didn’t love and having a past like Tom Sawyer.”
They both looked at her quizzically as she went on polishing.
“Anyway, while I was away I met a very interesting guy,” Warden offered.
“In Whitstable?” Rebekah exclaimed. “I find that hard to believe.”
“We met on the train from London on the way there, actually.”
“Mmm…” said Ivan. “That’s always fun between whistle stops. Difficult timing it, but definitely fun.”
“What’s he look like?” Rebekah pressed.
“Tall, good-looking. A little on the tough side.”
“Tough! No wonder you’re never interested in all those polite
young men I introduce you to whenever we go out.”
“His hair’s cut very short, shaved over the ears, and he has flat, grey eyes that look right through you.”
“Bah—and you’re not having a fling!” she exclaimed. “I can see the signs. What else do you know about him? What’s he do for a living? Is it an economically feasible match?”
“He’s a singer, actually. He’s got a band called Wheel of Fire. Have you heard of them?”
Warden looked at the two faces staring at him.
“You had a fling with Joshua Behrens?” Rebekah said, incredulous.
“Yes—that’s his name. Then you’ve heard of him.”
“My dearest darling, anybody who knows anything knows who Joshua Behrens is. He’s London’s biggest underground star. It’s like asking who the Queen is. If the band would only record a decent record they’d be world famous. He’s practically a cult hero.”
“What’s he really like?” Ivan asked. “Is he as bad as they say?”
“He was a bit ‘cheeky,’ as you Brits like to say. He’s also very political,” Warden said. “He fights for social causes. His band did a lot of work during the anti-apartheid movement.”
“Back in the good old days when there were real causes to fight for,” Ivan scoffed. “Whatever happened to Rock Against Racism? Now all you hear is ‘Poll Tax, Poll Tax, Poll Tax.’”
“Anyway, he’s very nice. I liked him.”
“`Nice!’” Rebekah snorted. “I don’t think that’s a word I’d use to describe that one.”
“He’s so r-r-r-a-aw,” Ivan said, trilling the word so they all laughed. “If I weren’t such a lady I’d ask how he is in bed, you lucky tart, you,” he said, tapping Warden’s arm.
“Very well mannered and every inch a gentleman, I’m sure,” Rebekah interjected.
The following evening Warden rang Joshua’s number. The voice that answered was oddly formal and polite. It suggested a strong secure world, one that Warden wanted to enter, as though he’d been standing on a doorstep looking in.
“I’m free this evening. Why don’t you come round?” Joshua said.
A Cage of Bones Page 15
