Other Halves

by Nick Alexander

  “Shall I go and change them?” I asked, wondering why we were still sitting here discussing my boots instead of driving to Cumbria. The rules of what one could and couldn’t do as a man were no clearer to me than they had been when I was an adolescent. And my embarrassment when I got it wrong was no less painful either.

  “Hey, I don’t give a shit what you wear, dude,” Glen said, finally starting the engine. But clearly, he did.

  As Glen glanced at my footwear again, raised one eyebrow, and then engaged first gear, I took a deep breath and steeled myself to regain my composure. “Anyway,” I pointed out, “you can hardly talk about Brokeback Mountain. Not in that shirt.”

  “I thought you hadn’t seen it,” Glen said.

  “I haven’t. But I know it’s about cowboys. And I know enough to imagine that they all wear checkered shirts.”

  “About cowboys, is it?” Glen said, with a snort.

  Not wanting to get into a discussion about Brokeback Mountain, I ignored this comment and so we drove in silence until we hit the motorway.

  “It’s gonna be freezing in Cumbria,” I finally said, spying a patch of frost at the roadside.

  “It is, but that’s Britain. What are you gonna do? The fish don’t care, why should we?”

  “I bet I won’t catch anything anyway.”

  Glen laughed. “Of course you will.”

  I had never been fishing before, and I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy the experience. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to catch anything and was unable to imagine that I’d be able to kill a fish even if I did catch one. I have always preferred to buy my fish filleted and vacuum packed, always preferred to avoid those eyes, staring up at me from the fishmonger’s counter.

  During the drive north, we talked little, just brief summary conversations from time to time about our kids, or our jobs, or some passing sports car or truck. The rest of the time, I sat and wondered what this trip, so long in the making, was about. Could Glen really just want to go fishing. In Cumbria? In November?

  It was three p.m. by the time we reached the fishery. At the farmhouse, I gave Betty, a ruddy-faced farming type, my credit card details and returned with a photocopied map of the grounds around the lake.

  “She says to go there,” I told Glen, pointing at a cross Betty had marked on the paper. “And she said we’re brave. It’s gonna be minus five tonight.”

  “The heater in this babe is great,” Glen informed me, studying the map and then restarting the engine.

  “We have to keep everything we catch apparently – no throwing back.”

  “That’s standard.”

  “And it’s a fiver a kilo. Seven if you want her to fillet it for you.”

  “What’s that per pound?” Glen asked.

  “No idea. A pound is two point two kilos, isn’t it? Or is it one point eight? Actually, I think it’s the other way around.”

  The van bumped and lurched and scraped across the frozen mudscape of the car park, and then developed a calmer, wave-like roll once we joined the gently undulating track around the lake. When we reached our pitch – a square clearing cut into a small copse of trees about thirty feet from the water’s edge – Glen switched off the engine and we climbed from the van.

  “Fuck me,” Glen said, lifting his arms above his head and stretching. “That was a drive.”

  “I told you I was happy to do some of it.”

  “You’re not on the insurance,” Glen explained. “Anyway, we’re here now.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, turning to face the sun, now setting beyond the lake in a fiery band of raw red brightness.

  “It’s beautiful,” Glen parodied, in a soppy voice.

  I shrugged. “Well it is.”

  “Red sky at night, fisherman’s delight.”

  “It’s freezing already.” My breath was rising before me in little clouds as I spoke.

  Glen nodded. “We had better get this fire lit.”

  “Oh, she said no fires on the ground,” I said. “Only contained fires and barbecues.”

  “Did she now?” Glen laughed, already scanning the ground for firewood.

  * * *

  The steaks were burnt, but despite that, eating around the illicit campfire felt great. Surrounding us, the forest seemed dark and menacing, literally teeming with life. But here, within the circle of light from the flickering flames, it felt warm and safe. A primeval sense of well-being enveloped me.

  “Another beer?” Glen prompted, and when I nodded, he reached into the cool bag, retrieved a can and threw it through the flames to me. Glen was working his way through the beers at quite a rate, and I was realising that I should have brought more. “It’s good to be out here,” I said, cracking the ring pull. “It’s good to get away.”

  Glen nodded and then tossed the last piece of burnt steak from his plate into the fire where it crackled and hissed. “Yeah,” he said. “Especially after all the shit you’ve been going through, I would imagine.”

  I sipped my beer.

  “I admire you, dude,” Glen said. “You know, the way you’re holding it all together. If Jennifer went off with some guy, I don’t know what I’d do. And your brother. I mean, wow. Like, fuck!”

  “Yeah,” I said, vaguely. This was the first time that my separation from Hannah had been mentioned, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to go there right now.

  “You must hate Hannah now, right?” Glen asked.

  “A bit. Maybe. But it wasn’t only her fault. I mean, it was mainly James’ doing really. That guy is such a worm. But other stuff happened. Nobody’s perfect. Not even me.” I wasn’t enjoying this conversation; it was making me feel angry. And nervous. And that was not what I had come fishing for.

  “So are you gonna tell me what went down in France?” Glen asked.

  I frowned at him. “Has Hannah said something?”

  “No.”

  “Then why ask me that?” My voice was a little more aggressive than I had intended.

  Glen raised his free hand. “Hey, calmos. She didn’t say anything. I just know that something went down in France. Because you all drove off laughing, and by the time you came back it was like the apocalypse had happened.”

  I started to breathe again. “Well, James turned up, didn’t he. Anyway . . .”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it . . .” Glen said.

  “I don’t.”

  “Then that’s fine.”

  We sat staring into the flames for a moment then, attempting to change the subject, I asked, “So what’s the best time for fishing?”

  “Early. They wake up hungry and dozy. Perfect time to catch them on a hook.”

  “They sleep?”

  “Joke, dude,” Glen laughed. “But I always get the best results early on in the day for whatever reason.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Do we need to be up early then?”

  “Six, seven, whenever dawn is these days.”

  “More like eight at this time of year then.”

  “Right,” Glen said. “Then eight it is.”

  By ten p.m., it was too cold to sit outside, but finding that the light inside the van wasn’t working and unable to find the torch, the only choices were to sit in the driver’s cabin, or go to sleep. We agreed on the latter option.

  “So how does this bedding work?” I asked, peering into the dark interior of the van. The sleeping arrangements had been on my mind since the sun had gone down.

  “Well, there’s a double up here,” Glen said, his voice coming from a pitch-black ledge over the driver’s cabin where he was wriggling into his sleeping bag.

  “I take it there’s a second bed down here somewhere?”

  “There’s a complicated thing that slots together where the dining table is, but frankly, pissed, in the dark, it’s gonna be a challenge, even for a brainbox like you.”

  “OK . . .” I agreed, a little confused. “I could sleep in the cabin I guess.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Gl
en said. “There’s loads of room up here. I don’t bite.”

  “OK . . .”

  “And if I do, I promise I’ll be gentle with you.”

  * * *

  I could not sleep. The roof of the cabin was oppressively close, and the heat rising from the gas heater was disproportionate to the volume of the van. As the heater only had two positions – on and off – and because when we tried “off” we instantly froze, I was now lying on top of my sleeping bag in just boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Even in these I was sweating like a pig.

  Beside me, Glen, one leg sticking out from his unzipped sleeping bag, was snoring with gusto – the gusto of a man who had drunk eight cans of Stella.

  I hadn’t been in such close proximity to a semi-naked man since my twenties. And now, as then, I felt nervous and uncomfortable and – these days, I can admit it – vaguely aroused.

  Eventually the temperature outside plummeted to a point where the heat loss from the van balanced out the perky little heater, and finally I started to doze.

  When I woke an hour later, I discovered that Glen had moved across the foam mattress towards me, effectively sandwiching me against the freezing outer wall of the van. Glen, in his sleep, had somehow managed to drape one arm over my waist.

  I lay there, paralysed, as I wondered what to do. I tried to guess what a blue-blooded heterosexual man would do in these circumstances. Wake Glen and push him away, presumably. And did the fact that I hadn’t yet done this – that I was lying here actually enjoying the proximity, loving feeling nestled against the warmth of Glen’s massive frame – did this mean, yet again, that I was not the blue-blooded heterosexual man I had pretended for so long to be? Then again, it was Glen who had moved to my side of the mattress here, Glen whose arm was draped over my waist. Perhaps blue-blooded heterosexual men simply didn’t behave the way I had always imagined. Perhaps I was entirely normal after all, and the great unspoken secret was that all men – and perhaps even all women – enjoy physicality with both sexes alike. Perhaps it really was just morals and rules that keep everyone apart, that made actors of us all. Or maybe, more likely, Glen, as I had long suspected, was simply no more like most men than I was.

  Glen’s arm actually tightened around me at this point, winching me in, small spoon against big spoon, and it felt amazing, it felt like a homecoming, it felt suddenly like everything I had ever wanted, but I realised that my reputation depended on how I reacted here. Glen was Jennifer’s husband, after all. This was too dangerous.

  “Glen!” I shouted, sitting up sharply and whacking my head on the roof vent.

  “What?”

  “Shit!”

  “What?”

  “I hit my head!” I told him. “And you’re taking the whole bloody bed.”

  In the pale moonlight I could just make out Glen’s features looking up at me. “Um . . .” he murmured, drunk or sleepy, or perhaps both. “Sorry, I thought you were into that shit.”

  I blinked in surprise and watched as he rolled away, then opened my mouth to speak, to ask perhaps, “What do you mean, that shit?” or “And you, Glen, are you into that shit?” but instead, I closed it without saying a word and climbed down from the bunk pulling my sleeping bag with me.

  I moved out to the driver’s cabin and wrapped my sleeping bag around me and sat and stared at the shimmering lake until it vanished behind the misted windscreen. I wondered what Glen’s words could mean. Was Glen, supposedly straight, open to whatever might happen here? And if he was willing, again, what did this mean about Glen, about men, about me? Had I been worrying needlessly for my entire adult life about these feelings? Realising that I was shivering with cold, I resigned myself to returning to the main part of the van. The alternative was death by hypothermia.

  I sat at the tiny dining table for a while, hesitating over whether I should perhaps return to the bunk and simply let whatever was going to happen happen.

  But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was too scared of the consequences: ridicule, rejection, scandal, and so, instead, using my telephone as a torch, I fiddled around with the table, hoping to convert the dining area somehow into a bed but managing merely to unclip it from the floor and the wall.

  Finally, admitting defeat, I pushed the table to one side, dragged down some seat cushions, and curling up on the floor, stared up at the moon, and wished I was still sandwiched against the big guy snoring above.

  * * *

  “What the hell are you doing down there?”

  I opened my eyes to see Glen, now clothed, standing over me. Grey dawn light was dribbling through the windows.

  “I couldn’t sleep up there,” I said, rubbing my eyes and propping myself up. “It was too hot.”

  “And you can sleep there?” Glen asked.

  “You took the whole mattress. I ended up squashed in the corner.”

  “You have to defend your territory, dude,” Glen said, now opening the door to the van and stepping out. “Fuck it’s cold out here,” he shouted back, as he closed it behind him.

  By the time we had eaten breakfast – instant porridge and coffee – dressed for the cold and set up, it was starting to sleet.

  Glen was wearing waders, a waterproof mac and a yellow fisherman’s hat. He was standing ten metres out, flicking his line with well-practised panache.

  Without waders, I was stuck on the riverbank, but I can’t say I minded. It was bad enough having frozen water landing on my head without having it sloshing around my feet as well.

  After an hour, my fingers were numb and my nose was running. The sleet had turned to snow now, but not the crisp, white kind – the wet, sticky, all-penetrating variety. The only parts of me that were warm were my feet, encased, thank god, in my new boots. I glanced out at Glen, an absurd cliché of manliness, apparently impervious to the cold, happy as Larry, flicking the line around as he pursued his third fish.

  “I’m frozen,” I shouted.

  Glen looked back at me. “It’s actually warmer out here,” he said. “It’s minus something where you are. But the lake’s about five degrees.”

  “I’m gonna go sit in the van for a bit.” I was already reeling in my line.

  As they thawed, my fingers started to tingle painfully, bringing back childhood memories of too much play in the snow.

  It was another two hours before Glen appeared in the doorway of the camper van, brandishing three trout, and by this time my mind was made up – I hated fishing.

  “So how’s our hunter-gatherer?” Glen asked as he dumped the fish in the tiny sink, and pulled the door to the van closed.

  “Better in here than out there. This is crazy weather to go fishing.”

  “Crazier than going on a fishing trip and sitting in the van the whole time?” Glen asked.

  “I tried it, Glen,” I told him, evenly. “But it’s not my thing.”

  Glen nodded at the fish in the sink. “Do you think you can gut one of those for lunch?”

  “Nope,” I laughed, “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  Glen rolled his eyes, and pulled a can of soup from a cupboard and handed it to me. “OK, I’ll do it later. But in the meantime, see if you can heat that up, would you, honey?”

  Without a word of complaint, that’s exactly what I did.

  The weather alternated between rain and sleet all afternoon. I ignored Glen’s taunts and remained in the van. I read the remaining chapters of my novel and then listened to Radio Four on the van’s radio.

  At five, the sleet turned to snow, proper: small, elegant flakes drifting downwards. This was apparently too much for even Glen to tolerate: he appeared in the doorway swearing.

  “Shouldn’t you leave them outside?” I asked, nodding at the carrier bag full of trout that Glen was brandishing.

  Glen glanced at the bag. “Why?”

  “It’s a bit hot in here for storing fish, that’s all.”

  Glen wrinkled his nose. “It’ll freeze out there,” he said, then backing out of the van he a
dded, “But you’re right. I’ll stick them up front.”

  Outside, Glen climbed out of his green waders and removed his mac, then returned to the van carrying a single large trout. “Right,” he said. “Time to taste the fruits of our labour. Well, my labour.”

  He tasked me with peeling potatoes and set about gutting the fish. We worked, side by side, to the sound of Radio Four. It felt strangely domesticated.

  “So?” Glen asked, once the meal was served.

  I forked a lump of the pan-fried trout to my mouth. “Wow. Amazing,” I said. And it was true. It was the freshest, richest, most succulent piece of fish that I had ever eaten. “I guess she can’t weigh this once we’ve eaten it either.”

  Glen winked at me and tasted the fish himself. “Fuck that’s good,” he said.

  “I hope that snow doesn’t settle. I hope we can still drive home tomorrow.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Glen said, pulling a fish bone from between his teeth.

  We spent the evening playing cards, drinking beer, and then, when this ran out, whisky from a bottle Glen produced. “Time for some serious stuff,” he said, and for tonight, I decided to go along with whatever Glen wanted. I decided to let Glen set the agenda just to see what would happen if I relinquished, for once, control. As long as I didn’t take the lead, I figured, there was no way I could be blamed – there was no way this could come back to bite me.

  Between us we drank the entire bottle of whisky, and then, with not inconsiderable difficulty, we laughingly climbed the ladder to the double mattress.

  As the previous night, it was stiflingly hot, but I managed to persuade Glen to open the roof vent before I fell asleep and rolled away. As Glen began to snore, I couldn’t decide if I was sad or relieved that this was all that was happening tonight.

  I was awakened, again, by the weight of Glen’s arm falling across my waist. This time, I did nothing; I didn’t move a muscle, neither aiding and abetting, nor resisting. I waited to see if, as before . . . Yes, Glen’s arm tightened around me and winched me in.

  I was fairly sure that Glen wasn’t really asleep, but in truth I couldn’t be sure. But whether Glen was dreaming of his wife beside him, or aware that he was snuggling against my back, one thing was sure: he was enjoying it. His dick, erect and hard, was pressing uncomfortably against me.