Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (27 page)

In the space of the few days that followed their visits to each other’s houses
– which in hindsight seemed charged with huge symbolic significance – the dynamic and the routines of Adam’s affair with Sylvain had apparently returned to how things were before the rude interruption of his English friends … his English lovers. But their relationship was different too: paradoxically enriched, it seemed to Adam, by the break that had occurred between them. Adam had hurt his lover but been forgiven by him. Because of this he was loved the more, and gave his own love even more freely in return.

But even as they resumed their rambles in the woods and meadows
– those happy, predictable, short stories with their rapturous, sexy, denouements – and even as Adam felt more certainly that now,
this
now, was better than ever, the best now of all time, there began to sound in his imagination the din of the unseen torrent, the world’s end, that lay only just beyond his time-horizon. Inexorably his dream ship headed towards it as it sailed across the golden calm. Soon the din would be a roar and then nothing that either he or Sylvain did to stop their ears would be able to shut it out. They would reach the end of their shared existence, their fragile craft would shatter as it plunged from the ocean’s edge and spill the two of them, shaking them apart in final, endless separation.

Six weeks.
That was the prosaic truth. Just six more weeks. The end of term was less than a month away and soon after that Hugh’s work on the dam would be finished too. Adam and his mother would have to move back to England at the end of July in any case. The owner of their French house would be coming to reclaim it in August. If the dam contract overran, Hugh would have to stay on in a hotel and join them when he could.

How well did Sylvain really understand all this,
Adam wondered? Had he fooled himself into believing – as Adam almost had – that the present millpond state of things would last for ever, allowing them to stay suspended in their summer idyll, sailing for ever onwards to where time had no horizon? For some time Adam did not dare to bring the subject up, afraid that even to mention the reality of their forthcoming final parting would bring it closer and cause the dream that they were living in to fall around their heads in ruin.

Then, one Sunday as they sat by the Lac de la Mouche, watching the dragon flies dart and hover above the reed stems, watching the
June sunlight shimmer on the ripples at the sandy margin, Sylvain said it. ‘ We’ll live here for ever, won’t we, Adam? It’s sure. I’ll never let you go.’

It was too direct a denial of the truth for
Adam to let it pass. He had been prepared, far too prepared, to kid himself up to now. But he found he could no longer acquiesce in an outright misunderstanding, or a lie, whichever this might be to Sylvain’s mind.

‘
You know that we can’t be together always.’ Adam stared steadily out in front of him, across the sunlit water as he spoke. ‘I’ll always love you in my heart. Always. But you know that at the end of July …’ And Adam spelt out in painful detail the departure dates of his family and himself. Sylvain was frowning with displeasure. ‘ You did know that,’ Adam added gently.

‘
Then I’d forgotten,’ said Sylvain crossly. ‘ Can’t you get them to change their minds?’

‘
That’s not possible. That’s the grown-up world.’

‘
Why should that concern us?’

‘
Don’t pretend to be a baby,’ said Adam, now sounding cross himself.

‘
Then
you
should stay, just you. With me. On the farm. Or if they won’t have us we could live in the barn. Or out here in the woods.’

Although
Adam understood perfectly well how ridiculous and impossible this suggestion was, he found his heart quite literally racing at the thought. He could see it so clearly. Sylvain and he living in the woods in blissful wish-fulfilment. It would always be summer. Winter would never come. They would always be young: Sylvain a lithely muscular twenty-three-year-old and Adam (who would nevertheless permit himself a little further physical development) eternally sixteen. In the late evenings he would take his cello out of its case and coax the nightingales into song…

He willed the seductive scene out of his mind, simultaneously ready to laugh at its absurdity and in thrall to its powerful attraction.
…There would be campfires at night, lovemaking in the firelight. They’d cook the rabbits they caught themselves…

‘
Don’t be silly,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a fantasy. You know that.’ He reached out a hand to take Sylvain’s. ‘I really love you. You know that too.’

Sylvain reached out with the hand that wasn’t clasping
Adam’s and picked a scruffy little yellow flower. He began to pull off the petals, one by one. ‘Un peu…, beaucoup…, énormément…, à la folie,’ he recited, but he stopped pulling the petals off at that point. Adam knew that the incantation went back to zero at that point.
Je t’aime pas du tout.

The next day the fields finally went scarlet, as Sylvain had said they would.
Under the hot sun the whole landscape glowed with the colours of fire and blood. Adam was just looking round him, taking in the sight after stepping off the school bus, when a familiar truck came nosing up behind him. Adam peered in before opening the door, just in case it was not Sylvain this time. But it was. ‘Hop in,’ he said.

Adam
did, dumping his backpack in the foot-well and then dropping his head into Sylvain’s lap to go through the village. Sylvain was in shorts today, the first time since Adam had known him, and Adam rubbed his nose along his lightly furred thighs. There was a tang of fresh sweat coming off his sun-warmed skin, which was unusual but not unpleasant. He sat upright after a minute or so to find they were bucking and weaving along the familiar road to Perrogney. He didn’t say anything when they whisked past the cart-track to Sylvain’s home farm without turning down it, but assumed that he was being taken to the
Licence IV
in Perrogney for a beer. But they were through Perrogney village in a minute and turning left onto the main road at Pierrefontaine. Here they skirted the high point of the plateau, up by the water tower, then looked across the southern slopes where the streams ran downhill all the way to the Med. ‘Where are we going,’ Adam asked, suddenly anxious. A road sign pointed to the E-17
autoroute
junction six.

‘
To see a friend,’ said Sylvain evenly. But there was an unfamiliar edge to his voice and his handling of the wheel was far from calm, even by the standards of his usual erratic driving. With an unpractised swerve he swung the truck right, onto the motorway slip-road, then right again at the snake’s-tongue fork that offered north or south by two alternative disorienting loops. Adam was too astonished to protest. In a moment they were on the
autoroute
heading south and being hooted by the terrified drivers who had been forced to swerve into the outside lanes by their abrupt manner of joining it.

For a moment
Adam became coldly practical. ‘Have you ever driven on a motorway before?’

‘
No,’ admitted Sylvain, ‘but the principle’s the same.’ They had rapidly zoomed up to the tailgate of a slow-moving lorry. Sylvain braked so sharply that he gave himself a fright, his foot slipped off the pedal and the pick-up lurched forward again, almost into the back of the lorry.

‘
Look out!’ Adam shouted, while Sylvain pulled hard down on the wheel propelling them unsteadily out into the middle lane like a misfired torpedo. A faster car hurtled past, inches away, its horn screaming. Startled, Sylvain veered back into the slow lane nose to tail with the lorry. Behind them came another hoot. ‘
Merde
,’ said Adam. ‘This is dangerous. You’re mad.’ He was really frightened now.

‘
Don’t worry. I’ll soon get the hang of it.’ Sylvain did not sound entirely convinced by his own answer.

‘
Before that happens we’ll both be dead.’ Adam remembered the fields of red poppies. ‘Oh God, oh God, I should have seen this coming.’

‘
It’s OK.’ Sylvain took one hand off the wheel and began to stroke Adam’s thigh.

‘
Don’t do that. Concentrate.’ He wanted to shout:
turn round, go back
, but at this precise moment that was not a real option. Instead, trying to keep his voice steady, he said: ‘ Stay in the slow lane. Come off at the next exit. Then drive us home.’ As he heard his own voice he realised how near to crying he was. He only just trusted it enough to add, ‘
je te prie
,’ I beg you, without it breaking. But Sylvain didn’t seem to hear. Without removing his hand from Adam’s leg he made another attempt to overtake. This time he refused to be intimidated by the passing traffic but forced it all to jostle into the outside lane with squealing tyres, and ignored its anguished horn-blasts alongside him as he over-steered his way between the high-speed queue he had created to the left of him and the lumbering lorry on his right – each vehicle having its own half-second of distinction as being just then the most perilously close. At last he was able to pull in front of the lorry and with palpable relief accelerated down the empty slow lane ahead of it. Half a minute later they were bearing down fast upon another slow truck.

‘
Just do what I asked you,’ Adam said. His voice was fading to a whisper. No answer came from Sylvain, though he did at least seem to be getting over his own fright and his steering was becoming straighter. Adam could see him beginning to look carefully in the rear-view mirror – the ones on the wings were missing – and guessed that he was planning to overtake the new challenge just in front. Adam shut his eyes and was surprised to find himself silently praying: Our Father, who art in heaven …

…But deliver us from evil.
Please, please, God, get me out of this. I’ll go to church again. I’ll never be bad. Never have sex with boys. I’ll go on a pilgrimage… Please, God, please … help me.

He felt the tears well up then trickle hotly down his cheeks.
Sylvain could hear him catch his breath as he tried not to sob out loud. Adam, his eyes screwed shut, felt a hand alight once more on his thigh. ‘What’s the matter, little one? You’re safe with me.’ As if a dam were bursting, Adam exploded into a paroxysm of tears and howls.

              ‘It’s OK. You can wake up now.’ Sylvain’s voice. Adam couldn’t believe he had been asleep. He looked around. An unfamiliar landscape was jogging gently past the windows. It was two hours since he had got off the school bus. His parents would be starting to wonder where he was. Not worry yet, but wonder. Adam had kept his eyes shut for some time in sheer terror. He had heard the engine revving painfully fast and guessed that Sylvain was overtaking the second lorry. Then the engine noise had steadied. The ride felt uneventful. Terror had subsided into sulk – and the sulk must have turned to sleep. Where were they? How far had they come? They had left the motorway at some point and were driving through a picturesque region of vine-clad hills. The vines were in fresh full leaf and the sun shone through the undulating rows that draped across the hillsides, turning them into rich necklaces of emerald. He hardly believed himself awake. ‘Where are we?’ was the first thing he said. He was exhausted after his fright, relieved to be alive, too bewildered to be angry just for now.

‘
I told you we’re going to see friends. We’re in the Saône-et-Loire, between Macon and Chalon-sur-Saône.’

Adam
knew roughly where that was: about a hundred miles south of Langres. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, petulant all of a sudden.

‘
Nearly there,’ said Sylvain, though he added disconcertingly, ‘I think.’

‘
You’ve been here before, then, right?’ Adam checked.

‘
Three times when I was a boy. I helped with the grape harvest. I had a friend.’ He sounded proud of all three achievements.

‘
We’re going to see a friend you haven’t seen since you were a child? Do they know you’re coming?’

‘
No,’ said Sylvain.

‘
Merde.’

Two minutes later Sylvain swung the truck off the little country road onto a farm track, just like the one at his home.
The farmhouse was already in sight, some distance off: an old, low, stone building. Their pace began to slacken as they approached it, a sign perhaps that Sylvain’s confidence in the welcome they were going to get was beginning to weaken. Eventually they drew up to the front of the house and got out of the pick-up. Adam breathed the warm still air. The scent of sun on vine foliage and flower, of distant hay, the aroma of high summer. The scents were wonderful but the silence of that hot fag-end of afternoon felt strange. No sound of barking dogs had greeted them, no sounds of work from barn or hidden yard. No cars were in sight, nor carts or trucks. And all the windows that faced the front were shuttered fast. Sylvain gave Adam a soulful but unpromising look. He seemed unsure what to do. So Adam went up to the front door and knocked upon it. It was painted the same colour, or non-colour, as Sylvain’s own. He wondered if there was a special range of mud-coloured paints created just for peasant-farmers. He knocked again. The sound awoke no echo. Twice more. He turned back towards Sylvain. ‘ Now what,’ he said. ‘ Plan B?’