Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (14 page)

Sylvain responded slowly.
‘No. But I’m not used to talking about things like that. I don’t know if I know how. How to find the right words, I mean.’

Adam
smiled a little nervously. ‘Then I’m not the first. Since you say that you have something about which there is something to say’ .

‘
Your French sounds a bit too posh today.’ It was the first time Sylvain had ever found fault with it.

‘
Sorry.’

‘
You aren’t the first. You’re the second.’ He paused for thought. ‘Not counting … uh …never mind. You’re the first I care about. The first I’ve ever told: I love you. Satisfied?’

‘
Very,’ said Adam. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t dare to ask about the other one – or two – or one and a half.’

Sylvain suddenly relaxed and smiled.
‘OK. I’ll try to explain.’

‘
You met my brother, Jean-Paul. Handsome, isn’t he? Well, you could say he was the half – of the one and a half. We used to play with each other in bed when we were little. Nothing wrong, was there? But then he grew big and hairy and wouldn’t let me touch him, touch him in that way I mean. Of course he knew what might happen: that he would lose control and come, and shock me and… uh …embarrass himself. And soon after that he got interested in girls and that was that. That was all it was.’ Sylvain looked uncomfortable for a second. He batted the problem subject over to Adam. ‘Did you have a brother?’

‘
Did? No. I’m an only child. You know that. But I always was. I never had a brother in the past either. I think I’d have told you if I had.’

‘
Maybe. Maybe we’ve had better things to talk about,’ suggested Sylvain.

There was a silence as they both considered this and wondered if it were true.
Then Adam picked up his glass, which was nearly empty, and slowly turned the last drops around the bottom of it while peering intently into it as if with great concentration. ‘ And the other one?’ he said.

‘
How to say this … It was a man who came to the farm on business quite often. He was quite young – for a man. And nice-looking. He was slim. He had a good head of hair and he smiled … you know … he smiled with his eyes. He used to talk to me. When I was about fourteen he used to play a game with me where he’d try to get his hands into my pockets to see what I’d got in them. I enjoyed it. Of course I did. When it came to my trouser pockets, well, they were always old, like they are now.’

‘
There were holes in them, you mean. Like now.’

‘
Just the same. It’s the same game that you play with me.’

There was a moment’s silence while
Adam took the connection on board. ‘And, as you say, you enjoyed it.’

‘
Once I’d got over the surprise that he was interested in me in the first place.’

‘
And where did you .. I mean, where …?’

‘
Around the farm,’ said Sylvain coolly. ‘In the pig-shed or the big barn, Like with us now.’

‘
And you? Did you do anything to him?’

Sylvain rolled his shoulders slightly as if the memory made him physically uncomfortable.
‘Once or twice, yes.’

‘
And did he … Did you both …’

‘
Come? Yes. Once he knew how … how agreeable I was, he got braver. He started to take mine out and I’d come in his hand. Just once or twice I undid his
braguette
and , how shall I say, returned the compliment.’

Adam
was both appalled and thrilled. ‘How long did it go on then?’ he managed to ask, discovering as he spoke that his mouth had gone quite dry.

‘
I don’t know. Maybe five years. I was quite grown-up when we stopped.’

‘
You stopped the thing?’

‘
His job changed. He stopped coming to the farm.’

‘
And now? You feel bad about it?’

‘
Should I? I just thought it was the sort of thing that happened. Of course it wouldn’t have been right of him if I’d been like the other kids. But I was always different. And he was kind to me. Always gentle. We liked each other.’ He paused for thought, perhaps struggling to find the interpretation of events and feelings that would least worry Adam. ‘But it wasn’t like being in love, of course,’ he went on. ‘I can say that now. I know now – I didn’t know then – what it is to fall in love. And I only know that now because of you. But all this time I’ve never thought before about you before.’

‘
Pardon?’ said Adam.

‘
I mean, before me. I mean, I never thought much about who you were before you met me. What you did. About you and other people maybe. Not bright enough, I suppose. Not the right kind of imagination.’

‘
A different kind,’ said Adam gently.

‘
But I’m not your first either.
Quoi?
’

‘
I wonder,’ said Adam, ‘if just this once we could have a second glass of wine.’

Sylvain took up the suggestion and went inside to order.
While he was away Adam reflected on the fact that Sylvain’s brief summary of his previous sexual experience had both made him jealous and given him an erection, but that at the end of the story, when Sylvain talked about loving him, the erection had died while the jealousy had remained. He found himself wondering with a coolness that he was surprised to find in himself, if the same thing would happen when, in a minute’s time, he told Sylvain about himself and Michael.

It did.
Having had a moment to collect his thoughts, and encouraged by Sylvain’s almost too obvious eagerness to hear them, Adam found himself narrating his early exploratory adventures with Michael with much brio and in colourful detail. Very quickly they were both displaying bolt-shaped outlines in their trousers, though frustratingly unable to do more than look at them because of where they were. ‘ But it was the same as with you,’ Adam finished. ‘Michael and I were never in love together. Only friends.’ Though he wondered if, in equating his experience with Sylvain’s, he was doing justice to his relationship with Michael. They really had cared for each other, after all, and for his own part at least Adam still did. And it was something between equals too, not something foisted by an older person on a kid who wasn’t ready yet to know what was right for him. Something in this line of thought began to make him feel uncomfortable. Sylvain himself was an older person as far as Adam was concerned. He dropped the thought-line at once and picked up another one. For some reason he had not mentioned Sean nor even wanted to. Why not? He didn’t want to pursue this either. He looked down at himself and across at Sylvain. They were both still rock hard and almost shivering with repressed desire and excitement. He gulped the last of his wine. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, and quickly reached out his hand to touch the tense outline in Sylvain’s trousers for half a second. ‘I think we need to do something about this.’

On another of those magical days they were cycling along the high lane between Mardor and Ormancey. It was a sunny afternoon, not quite as warm as most days were around that time, and there was something of a wind on the heights. Sylvain suddenly stopped and pointed upwards. ‘Regarde!’

Adam looked.
Two birds were wheeling together high above them. A buzzard had evidently strayed into the airspace of a sparrow hawk, or at least into what the sparrow hawk considered to be her own airspace. The buzzard, a dark silhouette somewhat larger than a tea tray, was trying to maintain a dignified course of slow spiral ascent in a thermal, pretending that the sparrow hawk was of no greater annoyance than a gnat. But the sparrow hawk was not to be ignored. A female, all grey and white stripes like calico and about the size of a table-napkin, she charged at the buzzard, dived down on it from out of the sun, and reared up unexpectedly from below, swerving away only at the last instant when the threat of a potentially fatal collision had forced it to alter course. For some minutes this dogfight continued overhead, a struggle between strength and agility, between mass and energy, between the dark silhouette and the lighter one through whose wings and tail the light of the sun shone in regular curving stripes.

Then at last it was over.
The buzzard decided it was hardly worthwhile continuing to stake its claim to that little part of the air for what had now become simply a matter of principle. With its whole body expressing its contempt for its miniature attacker it turned away and glided downward in a long glorious sweep towards the distant trees.

It never made it.
Perhaps its concentration wasn’t perfect, perhaps the wind caught it off guard at just the wrong moment. Its high-speed swooping flight arrested suddenly as if someone had hit the pause button and it dropped, in an undignified vertical tumble, head over tail, to the ground. It took Sylvain and Adam a second or two of gawping astonishment to realise that it had struck the telephone wire that ran high beside the road.

‘
Come on,’ said Sylvain. He laid his bicycle on the verge and went jogging off towards the bird. And Adam who, on his own, would probably have left well alone and tried to forget the injured victim, went trotting after. They found it standing on the ground, holding its head up proudly and frowning, but with one wing half open and trailing. ‘ I should have gloves,’ said Sylvain. ‘To catch a thing like that you need them. Plus a leather hood to slip over its head.’

‘
I didn’t bring one with me,’ said Adam. ‘Silly me. Should have thought.’

‘
Give me your hanky anyway,’ Sylvain instructed. ‘Better than nothing.’

‘
It’s a bit of a mess still.’ Adam got it out reluctantly. Since Sylvain rarely carried such a thing on him, not having many pockets to keep one in, Adam’s hankies were a permanent mess these days, having as they did to do duty for them both.

Had the bird decided to run it might have got away from them but all its instincts were to fly.
At Sylvain’s approach it simply turned away and thrashed its wings against the ground. To Adam’s surprise Sylvain had no difficulty in dropping the handkerchief over its head, then seizing the bird around the shoulders and expertly folding it together in the right way as if it had been a carelessly discarded map. And just like a map, it seemed so small now, clasped in a pair of hands. No longer a flying machine the size of a tea tray, just a poor bewildered bundle of feathers and still dangerous claws.

‘
Now what?’ asked Adam.

‘
You hold it,’ said Sylvain. ‘Keep it down on the ground so it can’t get its talons to you. I’ll knot the hanky around its head then it’ll be calmer.’ So Adam found himself for the first time in his life in charge of a live buzzard that wriggled warmly in his hands, and feeling surprised at how calm he was managing to be himself.

Although they were both in shirtsleeves, Sylvain had luckily taken the precaution of bringing a pullover
– the old one with the holes – which he had tied round his waist. He now wrapped this twice round the bird so that it was effectively strait-jacketed. Impressed, Adam did not repeat ‘ now what’ but waited, this time, for Sylvain to tell him.

‘
Et maintenant?’ said Sylvain.

They carried the bird back to where their bikes were lying by the threadbare hedge, and discussed the feasibility of various plans.
Sylvain would cycle one-handed with the buzzard under one arm. No, they would take Adam’s bike only; Sylvain would perch on the crossbar, cradling the patient, while Adam steered and pedalled. These might have been reasonable solutions for a journey of a few hundred metres but they were a mile from the nearest house let alone anywhere else and there were steep hills, down and up, to negotiate in every direction. And where were they going to take the buzzard anyway?

For the second time in a fortnight their predicament was eased by the appearance of a car arriving along a lonely road.
Adam flagged it down. Its single occupant was a local farmer but a stranger – at least to Adam. But he seemed not at all put out by the sudden interruption of his journey by two boys and a buzzard. He took in the situation even before it had been explained to him. ‘You’ll be wanting to go to the vet’s.’ he said. ‘Those bikes’ll go into the back. Boot won’t shut but I’ve got string. Tie the handle up with.’

Adam was too surprised by the whole sequence of events to try to make conversation in the car and neither Sylvain nor their phlegmatic driver seemed to think it necessary.
After a few minutes they pulled up outside a house in St. Martin, the village next to St. Ciergues, down by the dam. ‘You’ll be alright now,’ said the driver, unlashing the boot of his car and handing out bicycles like Father Christmas. Then he got back in and went on his way.

‘
I know the vet who works here,’ said Adam, suddenly recognising the old stone house they stood in front of. ‘His wife teaches music. She’s a friend of my mother. We’ve had them to dinner.’

‘
I know him too,’ said Sylvain, ‘ but it’s his assistant we’ve come to see.’ Sylvain nodded at the door with his head – the only part of him available to point with. ‘Ring the bell.’