by Fabian Black
“Of course. I understand. You know where I am if you need me for any reason, a chat, cup of tea, whatever. You can text me. I’ll give you my number.”
“I don’t own a mobile. There’s not much point when you don’t have any friends or family, but thanks, Si.” He hesitated and then said, “by the way, I like your hair, as well as your ears, it’s wavy.” He gave me a quick clumsy embrace. “Bye.”
He walked away, winding between the colourful market stalls set up in the centre of the high street.
I met Tony for lunch as arranged and listened to him wax lyrical about Ruby. He was smitten to his core, his eyes shining as he spoke of her. When he was done waxing, he asked how I was finding life in my Deco doughnut shop. I laughed and said I was enjoying it so far. He didn’t ask about James, but then why would he. He’d only met him once; on the day he helped me move. Of course he’d heard me mention ‘my friend’ James, but he had no idea of the arrangement we had shared. I had played no drunken New Year’s Eve game of truth or dare with him. To Tony, James was an offstage character, someone mentioned, but rarely glimpsed.
I almost told him I’d met the drippy hippy child he’d sighted on the day he helped me move in, but didn’t. It would sound like I was making fun of Dee-Dee. I didn’t want to make fun of him. I didn’t want anyone else making fun of him either. Talk turned to the topic of work.
There was no sign of Dee-Dee when I returned home. I made a pot of fresh coffee and switched on the TV set to watch sport, half expecting him to knock on my door, but he didn’t. I fell asleep on the sofa, waking much later feeling cramped and depressed. I headed to bed to sleep away the last vestiges of my over indulgence.
I didn’t see him the next day or the day after that, though I did spot a couple of work vans driving into the bakery grounds as I pottered around. They indicated he was getting things fixed.
I didn’t seek him out. I knew he had the means to buy food so I wasn’t worried about him going hungry. I didn’t want to crowd him. Besides, I needed space to begin to come to terms with what had been obvious to others. The crumbling of my sophisticated self-deception left me feeling raw, leading to more tears. They weren’t cathartic, but they were necessary.
Had I really been in love with James? Was it possible to be in love without knowing it? The more I thought about it the more I realised I’d suppressed my feelings because I knew they were not in line with what James wanted. I’d tried to live up to what seemed a refined ideal. Perhaps I did so in the hope it would bring me what I desired. I’d also made the mistake of thinking love was a single identifiable emotion, something sharp like an arrowhead to the heart or some other romantic nonsense. It wasn’t, not for most people. Love was an accumulation of things, of thoughts, feelings, desires and hopes.
I tried to hate James, but couldn’t. He had been as honest with me as he was with himself. He had deluded himself about what he wanted from a relationship and had helped mould me in its image. He found his personal truth when he met Kye. He paid me off by asking me to be best man at their ceremony. Convincing myself I was okay with it all was my way of saving face and maintaining pride. James and I were both guilty of dealing in personal subterfuge.
My decision to move had perhaps been the first subconscious glimmer of realisation about what was really going on in my life. The bakery had called to me because I needed it to. It was a place of refuge, and hopefully, in time, a place of healing.
Retrospect is a wonderful thing. It’s a shame it can’t be utilised at the time it’s needed, but then it wouldn’t be retrospect it would be something else - personal insight in my case.
It made me wonder about my parent’s marriage or at least about my mother’s perceptions of it. Maybe the writing had been on the wall for a long time before she saw it. There’s none so blind as those who will not see, or some such adage.
I had proven one thing to myself. Love was a complication best lived without. I made a promise. I wouldn’t fall again.
Chapter Thirteen
The days sped by and still I didn’t see Dee-Dee, apart from a brief glimpse one Saturday afternoon when I was driving past the municipal cemetery. I was returning home after playing a game of badminton with Tony. Ruby had been a spectator, cheering him on. I won the game easily seeing as Tony had his eyes on her more often than he did on the shuttlecock. She seemed as smitten with him as he was with her, which pleased me. Love might not be for me, but I didn’t begrudge it to others.
I spotted Dee-Dee because he was cradling a large bunch of bright yellow sunflowers in his arms. Their vibrant colour caught my eye. I was tempted to beep my car horn, but there was an air of concentration about him. It made me hold off. Glancing in my rear view mirror I saw him walk through the cemetery gates. I wondered about the flowers, who they were for, his uncle or his childhood friend? It was a large enough bunch so maybe it was for both of them.
Once home I pottered around doing housework while sporadically glancing out of the window, looking out for him returning to the bakery. I somehow missed him. I considered buzzing his apartment with a view to asking him to join me for Sunday lunch, but decided against it. He hadn’t sought me out, even though I had issued an open invitation at our last meeting. Not taking it up seemed to indicate he had no desire or need for my company.
A part of me began to wonder if I’d been rash in lending him money. Maybe he was a conman and I wouldn’t ever get it back. Even while thinking it I dismissed it. He was probably submerged in some art project. Artists like writers are solitary creatures once the muse is upon them. Maybe his mother had commissioned another work. I brought to mind the sketch he had shown me. Such detailed work would take a lot of hours.
I still couldn’t quite get my head around the idea of a mother exposing herself so intimately to her son. To my mind it was taking the bohemian concept a step too far. The sketch I’d seen had been powerful and erotic, probably more so than the original photo I suspected. Maybe it was why Anne liked to have them transcribed from one medium to another. It was a way of legitimising her activity, turning it from porn into art. Of course erotic photography was an art in its own way. Maybe Dee-Dee’s pencil was kinder to her advancing years than the camera lens? I crushed a thought about asking him to show me the original photographs.
I received and accepted an invitation to attend my first residents meeting. It would be a good opportunity to put more names to the faces I glimpsed and smiled at as I came in and out of the bakery. It made sense to get to know my neighbours, if only so I could report back to my mother.
The meeting was held in what had once been a caretaker’s office situated in the front hall, though there was no longer a single caretaker. The work to keep the grounds neat and tidy and the outside windows and indoor corridors spick and span was contracted out. Residents paid an annual fee towards it.
The Gupta’s and their new baby were at the meeting, as was my immediate neighbour, the one I’d smiled at. She was called Sandra Bailey and worked as secretary to a private sector cosmetic surgeon. There was the friendly Burns’s, Bob and Sue. They were both semi-retired civil servants who lived in apartment four on the ground floor. Mrs Royston, whose first name was Edna, was also in attendance. She was a spry, wiry woman with a heavily wrinkled face and a cloud of pale candyfloss hair. She eyed me with cold suspicion, which thawed slightly when I revealed I was a teacher. She declared herself pleased to have another professional living under the bakery roof. I felt like I’d been given a royal dispensation.
The meeting was more a social event than anything else. Bob, who was obviously comfortable with being in charge, kicked things off by raising his teacup and proposing a toast to baby Cole, whom we all duly admired. He was destined to be a heart breaker if he inherited the combined looks of his proud parents. Sanjiv, an accountant who was as pretty and as shy as his wife thanked everyone for the balloon and flowers. They were probably the ones I’d seen being delivered.
The meeting then got down to business, whic
h consisted of reviewing whether the contract company were doing a good enough job. Everyone claimed to be satisfied, except Mrs Royston, who said the cleaners skimped when it came to dusting the corridor skirting boards and picture rails. Bob placated her by saying he’d have a word. I guessed that over time he’d had a lot of words on her behalf.
Baby Cole suddenly decided he’d had enough of the meeting and began to cry, his tiny fists making motions in the air. Despite Mrs Royston’s advice to ignore him, Sanjiv and Jaina left, taking their son back to their apartment to feed him. Sandra also made her excuses, saying she had work to do.
“Lovely couple, the Gupta’s,” said Bob when they’d gone. “Quiet, but do anything for you. Sandra’s nice too, but tends to keep herself to herself since her divorce. It knocked her for six when her hubby ran off with a woman half his age.”
Bob and his wife Sue then put me in the picture about the other occupants of the bakery. The only ones I hadn’t yet met on my floor were the Browns. She, Monica, was a hospital administrator and her husband, Jeff, was a driving instructor. They were in New Zealand, visiting Monica’s family. Jeff was easy going and laid back, a good trait considering his line of business, but his wife could be a bit brusque, probably due to stress from her high-pressure job.
On the ground floor there was Henry Almond, mid-thirties, who was employed by a large pharmaceutical company and travelled a lot. He never came to any of the residents meetings, but was pleasant enough if you happened upon him. Then there was Dee-Dee.
I quickly made known I’d met him and considered him a friend. It seemed to put Mrs Royston’s nose out of joint. Her frostiness returned. She felt obliged to put me in the picture.
“He doesn’t work you know, never earned an honest penny in his life and he’s,” her lip curled, “one of those homosexuals, gays or whatever you call them these days.”
“He’s an artist,” I said, feeling a need to stand his corner. “He works in his own way.” I outed myself. “I’m gay too. There are a lot of us about.” I smiled to show I meant no ill will. “We’re generally harmless and much like other people.”
“So you say.” She got abruptly to her feet. “I’ve got things to be getting on with. The next meeting will be in November to discuss Christmas matters.” She bade farewell to Bob and Sue, nodded at me and made a brisk exit.
Bob and Sue didn’t appear discomforted by my outing. In fact they looked at me with renewed interest.
“Don’t mind Edna too much.” Bob grinned. “Her bark is generally worse than her bite. She has a bit of a bee lodged in her bonnet when it comes to Dee-Dee.”
“Because he doesn’t work in a conventional sense and he’s gay?”
Sue pulled a face. “They’re just extra excuses for her not to like him. She thinks he’s peculiar, and he is a bit, but he’s harmless and rather sweet. I doubt he’d hurt a fly.”
She went on to confirm what Dee-Dee had already told me.
“Edna happened to be a close friend of his mother’s mother. According to Edna, his mother, Anne, is a woman of loose morals who brought shame and disgrace on her family in more ways than one, though she won’t give any juicy details. Apparently Anne was disowned when she got pregnant with Dee-Dee. Her mother told her she was no better than a prostitute.”
Bob chimed in. “Her folks were the kind of good Catholics who put devotion to religious dogma before kindness to their daughter and unborn grandchild.”
Sue continued. “Edna claims the scandal shortened her friend’s life. She also reckoned Dee-Dee’s uncle was unfit to look after a kid, letting him wander around all hours doing what he wanted. Him being a published writer didn’t impress her either. She reckons writing romance isn’t a job for a real man.”
I could have given them a few juicy details about Dee-Dee’s mother, but didn’t. He had shared them with me and I considered them to be in trust. I stuck to asking a neutral question. “Have you met his mother?”
“Not as such.” Leaning back in his chair Bob stretched out his legs and hooked his hands behind his head. “We moved into the bakery when Dee-Dee was about sixteen. She was long gone by then. The only time we saw her was at the old man’s funeral. She came over from America.” He gave a little whistle. “She was a sight to behold. You could see why there were rumours about her being into kinky sex stuff. She arrived dressed in a black leather dress leaving nothing to the imagination. It looked as if it had been sprayed on, what there was of it. The vicar didn’t where to look.”
“She was unnatural if you ask me.” Sue cast her husband a sour look. “You’d never guess Dee-Dee was her son. She didn’t so much as hug him, even though he was heartbroken by his uncle’s death. He sobbed his heart out at the funeral, but she barely even spoke to him. She was too busy posing like some glamour model.”
Bob gave a cheeky wink. “Well she had the figure for it. Her legs went on forever.”
“You shouldn’t have been looking, not with your blood pressure.” Sue glared at him and then turned to me. “I’m glad you’ve struck up a friendship with Dee-Dee. He’s always pleasant when you come across him, but he doesn’t seem to let people get close to him. You never see him with friends. He got more reclusive after his uncle died. I’m sure some young company will do him good. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of you two,” she raised speculative eyebrows, “you know, getting together. You’d make an attractive couple.”
“We’re just friends,” I said firmly. “Nothing else.”
“Bob and I used to say exactly the same thing. We said it for nigh on six years, and then one day we suddenly realised we were something more than ‘just friends’ and had been from the day we met, only we were too blind to see it.”
I felt somehow comforted by the admission. At least I wasn’t the only blind person when it came to love. Curiosity forced me to ask. “What made you see it in the end?”
Bob answered, his habitually smiling face taking on a more sober look. “Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer. It gave us both a whole new perspective on life. It was the smack up the back of the head we both needed to stop dithering in the friendship shallows and dive into the depth of commitment.”
I turned to Sue. “It must have been a frightening time for you.”
“I was one of the lucky ones. I survived.” Sue reached out a hand to Bob, who took it and gently patted it. “And I got a husband into the bargain.” She gave an impish wink. “So be careful. Things aren’t always the way you see them.”
“Oh I’ll be careful.” I returned her wink and stood up. “I’m for the off. It’s been a pleasure meeting you both properly.”
They said likewise and we shook hands. I went back to my apartment feeling pleased to have formally met most of my neighbours. My mother would be pleased to know on the whole they were a nice bunch. Nice is an important concept to her, and I suppose, like kindness, nice is a somewhat undervalued trait.
Chapter Fourteen
A sweltering August passed the midway point and still I hadn’t set eyes on Dee-Dee. It began to bother me. Then fate and a garden grow bag intervened. It was a Saturday. The new college term was less than a fortnight away. I’d been cooped up all morning preparing lesson plans. Come lunchtime I decided a break was in order. I went out for a walk, whistling an appropriate tune about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun. I returned via the rear entrance, as had become my habit. I’d mounted the first flight of stairs when I heard a shriek followed by Mrs Royston’s harsh tones.
“Look at the mess! What do you think you’re doing? It’s come under my door.”
“Sorry, sorry. It was an accident. I must have caught it on something. Don’t worry, Mrs Royston. I’ll clean it all up.”
Dee-Dee sounded panicky. Leaping back down the stairs I pushed open the safety doors. He was standing outside Mrs Royston’s apartment holding a huge compost bag in his hands, or what remained of one. Most of the contents seemed to be spewed along the length of the corridor in various si
zed clumps.
“You had no business bringing it in here in the first place!”
“What’s the matter, can I help?” I strode towards them.
“Simon!”
Dee-Dee looked relieved to see me, not so Mrs Royston. She scowled, her face flushing a deeper shade of red.
“Look at the mess he’s made, just look at it. It’s everywhere. What does he want to be bringing compost indoors for? It belongs outside not inside, and how could he not notice it was spilling everywhere? We’ll have the cleaners complaining. They’re not employed to shift soil.”
“It was heavy, Si.” He shot me an appealing look from bright pink eyes. “I was carrying it on my back. I must have snagged it on the fire doors as I came through. I didn’t notice anything until I got to my door and set it down.”
“You’re an idiot!”
“There’s no need for personal abuse, Mrs Royston.” I utilised a tone I used when speaking to warring teenagers. “I’m sure Dee-Dee meant no harm.”
She snorted. “You don’t have to live next door to him. Look at him.” She jabbed a disparaging finger. “He isn’t normal. Pink eyes, I ask you, what kind of man wants pink eyes, and he’s been wandering around outside in the gardens in the early hours dressed in nothing but a pair of shorts. I daren’t look out of my windows. I should call the police, have him arrested for indecent exposure.”
“I doubt they’d regard a man in shorts as a public danger.” I said smoothly. “It has been exceptionally hot lately. You can’t blame him for wanting to cool off, especially at night.”
“I might have guessed you’d take sides with your own kind.” She turned her attention back to Dee. “Make sure you clean up the hall, because I’m not doing it.” Pulling her front door closed with a bang she double locked it and marched off down the corridor, bristling indignation.
