Captured Shadows (12 page)

As they were painting, Mr Wilkes in methodical lines across the width of the paper and Annie messily, happily, daubing crushed roses in haphazard patches across the paper and half of the table, I caught Archie's eye and he winked at me; luckily nobody else was looking, but I felt that wink like an arrow in my heart although my words, when I next spoke, sounded calm and normal and as though they belonged to another person.

"Now, everybody else, take those pages once they're painted – hold them carefully in the corners, Bobby, they'll be weak, try not to let them tear too much – and find a place in the garden to lay them flat to dry. Perhaps put them in the shadows in the courtyard. We don't want too much sunlight on them, you see; it's the sun that'll make our pictures."

"What kind of pictures?" Bobby asked, impatient and stained about the hands and cuffs with crushed rose petals. "Not photographs?"

"No, not photographs. Go on and take those pages. Then see if you can run from the garden gate to the sea and back ten times without stopping, and I'll tell you."

By the time the boys – Archie and Mr Wilkes included, to my surprise – had run their races, Mrs Wilkes had made tea and bread-and-butter enough for us all and the pages were done, fragrant and still slightly damp but ready enough for their purpose. I showed the others how to put things on the prepared paper, leaves and grasses and shapes cut from some old backing cards we had found in the cabinet, and press them in place between panes of glass to cook in the bright summer sunlight
. A
fter tea, and after
helping to
tidy the splashed kitchen, I took the glass and leaves off one of the pieces of paper to show them how the blackberry emulsion had already started to fade under the light, leaving the shape of the grass and dandelion leaves behind in a darker shade of pink.

"That's how photographs work as well," I heard Archie tell the others as they clapped and cheered, "but instead of leaves and things we put pictures in negative down, glass pictures, and you get the picture the right way round on the paper then. We don't use blackberries, though. It's a right waste if you ask me."

"You can go and pick us a basket for supper, then," Mrs Wilkes told him, and I watched Archie and Annie wander off along the twisted garden path, hand in hand and chattering, the two boys chasing after them and little Fred tottering behind and bawling at them to wait. My life seemed so quiet, suddenly, so queer and lonely in contrast with theirs, and I wished miserably that Archie and I didn't have to take the train home the next afternoon and we could stay
t
here all summer, making messes and playing football on the wet sand as the sun went down instead of spending our nights on the things we did, things I had never realised quite how much I despised until
then
.

I awoke early the next morning, perhaps disturbed by the unfamiliar mattress and the strange silence of a bedstead that didn't creak whenever I moved. I lay there for a while with the blanket flung away from me and tangled around my feet, listening to the sound of the Wilkes children's breathing across the room and the gentle, faraway murmur of their father's snores next door. The room was dim, the dawn light strange and silvery, too early yet to be gold; everything looked like a living daguerreotype.

At the other end of the bed I could see Archie's face,
his hair
tumbling across his forehead and his mouth hanging open so his breath warmed my bare foot on every exhale. To be in a bed with him at all, even top and tail as we were, seemed to me such a dangerous and terrifying risk that
every night since we arrived
I had lain awake for hours unable to calm my mind. I tried to tell myself that things were different for the Wilkeses, that large families with little money had more urgent things to buy than enough beds for one a body and they might be offended or ashamed by my reticence; yet I couldn't forget my own bed in Bloomsbury, the scent of Archie's hair that still
clung to
my pillow after he left and the way his fingers looked wrapped tight around the squeaking bars as I claimed him.

I dared to touch him again at the memory, but only because everybody else was still asleep, and only the gentlest brush of a fingertip across his heel. His toes had found their way beneath the edge of my pillow in the night and they wriggled there at the touch as he woke slowly, prompted by a second careful prod, and bit my ankle in retaliation before giving me a sleepy, brilliant smile.

"I almost forgot where we were," he said in a murmur that was barely audible, even in the stillness of the sleeping room.

"That would be unwise."

"Wouldn't it just?" He turned on his side and reached for my pocket-watch on my waistcoat where it hung haphazardly on the bedpost, tilting it to catch enough of that greyish light to read its face. "Nearly half four. Are you awake?"

"Yes." I moved my leg just enough that it lay against Archie's, only the thin cotton sheet separating the warmth of his skin from mine. "Are you?"

"Yes." There was so much unspoken in those careful affirmations. I watched his eyes flicker across the room to where his brother
s
lay sleeping, watched him pull his lower lip in between his teeth and nibble as he considered what to do next, then very quietly he said, "Let's go for a walk."

* * *

I had never seen a beach so empty of people before, not even during howling storms in the dead of winter when I used to visit my grandparents in Eastbourne as a child. There was always some brave, determined soul who needed to get somewhere and damn the weather; but here, in the ghostly silver that comes just before the dawn, the world seemed empty as though Archie and I were the only two people alive in it.

"Eerie, ain't it?" he said in a hushed voice. "It looks like a stage set up for actors but they ain't showed up yet. Or like one of them painted backdrops in the studio, except the sea's moving."

Our shoes kicked up dry little flurries of sand, then it clung to them in clumps when we walked as far as the tide line, leaving footprints stamped upon the expanse of wet beach for anybody to see, but nobody was there. Down the coast towards the east we could see the gentle pink of dawn just beginning to show on the horizon. There would be swimmers out in an hour or two, the men and sometimes women who only liked to bathe in empty water and raced each other to be the first in it, but for now the beach was ours alone and, as if he had read my mind, Archie bumped into me slightly as we walked and casually curled his little finger around my thumb.

I was still cautious, despite this feeling of being a thousand miles away from any other living thing, and only let his touch linger for a moment before I pulled my hand away. "Someone might see."

"Who? All them invisible people out walking on the beach in the middle of the night? I suppose they might."

I turned to face him, walking backwards with my hands stuffed in my coat pockets against the early morning chill. Margate slept behind him, dark shadows of buildings and only a few windows illuminated by children's nightlights or early servants. The beach looked like ash in that strange silvery light, dreamlike and foreign, and Archie seemed as indistinct and colourless as a shadow.

"Someone might."

"There ain't nobody around. Normal people are still sleeping at this hour. What do you think, some feller's gonna pop up out the sand like a jack in the box and start pointing his finger?"

The idea made me smile despite myself and I turned around again with my back to him so he couldn't see, but that only made him quicken his step until he was back by my side, knocking his cold hand against my own where it was still hidden in my pocket and trying to look innocent about it.

"You worry too much," he said quietly.

"Perhaps you don't worry enough."

"James, I ain't even touched you once this week, not once. We been sleeping in that bed and I never even hardly look at you, never mind touch you. Don't tell me I ain't worried. I think about it all the time. I just ain't worried
now
, not when there's no need. Even if there was some nosy parker watching out the windows they ain't gonna see my finger touch your finger from all the way over there, it ain't as though I rolled you over in the sand and started riding you like a bloody horse."

I couldn't decipher from his tone whether he was upset or angry or merely making fun of me. His voice was as cool and steady as ever as he looked out to sea, directing the words over the water towards Clacton and Felixstowe – but his hand disappeared into his pocket after that and I felt stupid, suddenly, and as if I ought to apologise. It made me brave, or maybe reckless, in my need to make him smile again, and I said, "I wish we had a horse. We could hitch him up to one of those bathing machines and take it out, then you could do as you wished with my finger and we'd be able to hear the splashing if anybody came to interfere."

He looked at me blankly for a moment with his eyebrows raised in surprise, then he started laughing so hard I had to beg him to be quiet for fear of being overheard. Before I could stop him he took off at a run to where the bathing machines were parked on the dry sand, a line of little wooden boxes on wheels with eaves like houses and numbers painted on the fronts.

"Help me," he said when I caught up with him, his back to the box and feet slipping in the sand as he tried to shove it toward the shoreline with his skinny shoulders. "Weighs a bleedin' ton!"

"You'll never move it."

"
Help
me, then!"

"It's too heavy, though. Look, the wheels are sunk in the sand."

"Just give it a shove, come on. Try. You can't make me a promise like that then not even try."

He was still laughing, flushed in the face from his run and the exertion of trying to shift the bathing machine. I put my back next to his and shoved on his count, feeling the motion of the wheels quivering but not turning no matter how hard we pushed.

"James, you're not even trying."

"I am!" But I gave up then, collapsing in the soft sand and resting my head back against the wheel on my side of the bathing machine while I waited for the feeling to rush back into my numb shoulders. "I'm a photographer, not a circus strongman."

Archie's hand was in front of my face when I opened my eyes, fingers opening and closing impatiently until I took it and he helped pull me to my feet. Still conscious of somebody watching – even at this hour, even in the near-dark – I wanted to drop his hand and move away from him again, but the curling smile at the corners of his mouth held me where I was more firmly than the grip of his fingers ever could.

"Then we'll just have to get inside it where it is," he said against my ear, "and listen out for voices."

There was a little ladder at the side facing the sea, the lower rungs crusted with salt where they usually rested in the water, leading to a latched but unlocked door. Archie went up first, brazen and carefree, and I followed, suspiciously checking what little I could see of the beach in this low light before I took his hand again and let him pull me up, through the wooden door and into his arms. At once he kissed me, clutching tight around my waist and sighing into my mouth, a high-pitched little sound of desperation that I found myself echoing without meaning to as his hands roamed across my back and round to the front of me where they worked to slip my coat from my shoulders and toss it on the little bench at the back wall of the box. My collar was next, my waistcoat and shirt buttons from the sternum up until he changed his mind and slid his hand across my stomach and down, running his palm lightly across the fabric and as quick as lightning across bare skin when my trousers fell down around my ankles. I laughed, exhilarated and gasping for breath, and tried to make my fingers remember how to work, but it was so difficult with his hand on me like that, the friction of his skin on mine.

"I feel... somewhat at a disadvantage," I managed to say, wheezing the words against Archie's collar as I pressed clumsy kisses to the beating flesh of his neck. I could feel the vibration of his laughter against my lips, and of his words when he replied.

"You feel disadvantaged cos I'm tossing you off? How's that work, then?"

"No!" He always used language so wantonly, with an unabashed freedom I could never match; his words made me blush like a school
boy
, although the act itself never embarrassed me, and I pressed closer into the circle of his thumb and fingers with my own hands cupping his cheek and winding through his hair. "Disadvantaged because all your clothes are still on."

"Shush, Jim. I'm busy."

I let him nudge me toward the bench, where my coat lay in a crumple of creases I didn't have the strength to straighten out. Archie was a silhouette in front of me, a dark shape against the near-dawn of the sky, until he fell to his knees with a muffled thump on the wooden boards and lifted the fabric of my shirt to bare my stomach to his mouth and tongue and nipping teeth. My prick in his hand felt hot and heavy, straining into his touch and making me shudder when the tip bumped against the soft skin of his neck; when at last he stopped taunting and ran his pointed chin down the whole length of me to take me in his mouth, the heat of it in the cool air from the open door made me catch my breath and whimper, hands wrapped tightly around the edge of the bench until I felt his fingertips pulling at my knuckles. He brought my hands to the back of his head to wind in the soft hair there, but there was no need to direct him; he knew what to do by now, as I knew what to do for him. I could feel him smiling and the faint rumble of muffled words or murmurs around me, the rough velvet of his warm tongue and, once, the accidental scrape of teeth before he laughed an apology and carried on. I threw my arm over my face when it happened, trapping the sounds I made in the crook of my elbow until Archie sat back on his heels, looking pleased with himself and licking his lips like a cat, still stroking me with a steady hand until I'd stopped trembling.

"Now," I said, breathless and weak with release, "
now
will you let me get your clothes off?"

"Get yours back on first." He stood, damp palms on my bare knees to steady himself, and began to refasten my collar and loosened tie for me, fingers moving swift and sure even in the poor light. "In case we need to run away."

It was an uncomfortable reminder of how exposed we were, even hidden in the bathing machine; the box was on the sand in the dawning light, without even a few feet of water to warn us of anybody's arrival, and if anybody did come there was no second door to use as our escape. I buttoned my trousers quickly and peered around Archie at the doorway and the pink and orange sheep's wool of clouds in the morning sky.

"What time is it?"

He found my watch and tilted its face towards the doorway to see. "Only just past five. Will you stop worrying?"

"No. Will you start?"

"James, there's nobody around." He even went to stand a few rungs down the ladder, checking the beach to both sides of us. "Promise. It's empty."

"So why did you say we might need to run away?"

He shrugged, easy, and hauled himself back up into the box to come and stand in front of me again, dark against the dawn and the front of his trousers bumping out with the press of his prick behind the fabric. His hand was there, a white contrast against the wool, unfastening the buttons as the fingers of the other gently touched my face then dropped away. "Depends how long you take. The quicker you go, the safer we are."

"Is that a challenge?"

That smile crept back into his voice. "If you like."

"T
ime me." I handed him my
watch and he laughed, breathless and giddy, against the back of his wrist as I pulled him free from the constraints of his clothes and began to kiss him there, tasting him on my lips and tongue and far back in my throat. I had become so familiar with him in such a short space of time, a whirlwind of learning how to touch anybody but myself; he liked it like this, fast and determined, spit-wet fingers and thumb stroking him hard and meeting my lips somewhere at the middle. I liked it slower, or perhaps that was just the lingering power of a single memory: that day we spent in my rooms, soaking the sheets with perspiration as the sun moved across the width of my window and disappeared.