Junction X (27 page)

He dropped me at the house and for a moment we sat outside. He rubbed his knuckles against the outside of my thigh. It was a reassuring gesture but it did nothing. We played the scene from before; I went to leave the car and he held me back, just for a second.

“Eddie. Keep in touch, whatever happens?”

 
I think he thought I was going to go in and start packing a bag. As I walked up the front path, I wondered why I hadn’t done that instead of ineffectually walking away and then walking back. Why couldn’t I just leave?

As I reached the back door, I looked up, as I always did, towards Alex’s room, and saw him standing looking out of the window. However, he wasn’t looking at me but at Phil’s car. He watched it as it drove away, then turned back into his room without glancing my way.

Nausea flooded over me. We’d done nothing that he could have seen, but the way he’d said “I don’t want to be nothing” haunted me. I missed him so much and despite being mere yards from where I was standing, he was impossibly far away.

+ + +

After his exams, our reunion swept everything aside for a brief and passionate time. I swore to myself that I would make him feel, make him
know
that he was everything to me, and I spoiled him horribly. I bought him gifts of sweets and flowers, all perishables, all disposable. Nothing he had to take home except a Thornton slide rule that I couldn’t resist getting him.

His eyes were bright and dark and his lips were full in that post-love way they always were. I reached under the mattress and took the case out, put it on his stomach. He yelped at the sudden cold.

“Another present?”

“Open it.”

“You could have wrapped it.” The disappointment must have shown in my face, because he lunged forward with a kiss and a laugh. “I’m only teasing you, Edward. You don’t have to keep buying me things.” He smiled broadly. “But I do like it. It makes me feel like a mistress.”

We were silent as he opened the case and I could tell he was pleased. “It’s lovely.” He held it up against his neck, like it was an emerald necklace. “Goes with my eyes, don’t you think?”

“I wanted to give you something you could take,” and I couldn’t finish the sentence, but I pulled him into my arms.

Sometime later I lay with my head on his chest. He worked his slide rule with one hand and touched my hair with the other. I regretted the present already; giving him something for university seemed to be opening up a door that he’d already stepped into. I didn’t know how anyone could feel as much, how a heart could be so full of emotion and still continue to function.

He wouldn’t talk about the examinations themselves, and every time I started to—in genuine interest—he’d change the subject or distract me in many delightful ways. I couldn’t even draw him on
why
he changed the subject; though I’d never taken him for superstitious, it was as if he feared that discussing them in any manner would blight his chances. I remember clearly him lying beside me, hot and sticky, while I explained that he’d finished the damned papers, so it didn’t matter what was said after the fact. From his revision and his grasp of the subjects covered, it was clear to me that he was going to shine, and shine he certainly did.

The results came in, and I didn’t need a clandestine meeting to hear about it. Sheila and Alf dragged him over to our house, their smiles as wide as their faces and pride coming off them in waves.

“He can take any of his offers with those results.”

“All he needs to do is to decide.”

Alex, clearly embarrassed, was trying not to smirk. The young man I loved was brimming over with happiness, although I dared not meet his eyes.

Given the worsening atmosphere, Valerie only came to life when visitors called or the children were around, but she was magnificent that afternoon. She was always impressive when guests arrived, expected or not, and she swept into action as if she’d been planning for this moment for as long as Alex’s parents had. Perhaps that was true. She certainly produced a bottle of champagne that I don’t remember buying, and it was cold, too.

The twins sulked horribly when they weren’t allowed a glass. “Alec is!” they complained bitterly, so they were placated by less than a thimbleful mixed with their cordial.

Alex was permitted half a glass, which I then filled to the brim amongst universal complaint. It gave me a reason to put my fingers over his as I steadied the bottle. Mistakes. We all make them, but that was probably the first I knew of; the exchange of glances between us was probably the second.

Then we all sat around and discussed Alex’s choices—for some reason I was considered to be the authority on universities, when I actually knew very little. Alf had dragged brochures along; for a while, I was reminded of Alex’s first visit to this house, when he’d been an almost invisible teenager, rolling his eyes at his parents. That afternoon he tried to slide into the background but that escape had gone for him. He was at the forefront and, suddenly, to my eyes, completely adult, hiding in his jeans and T-shirt. I sat and stared at him, then realised what I was doing. I got up to empty the bottle, then took it into the kitchen.

I think I was staring at the pictures on the fridge when the door opened and Alex came in; there was a wall of laughter from the sitting room and then it was cut off sharply as the door closed behind him.

“It’s all right,” he said, reacting to something he’d seen on my face. “They are busy planning my life. As usual.”

“What
are
you going to be?”

“Happy.”

Goose pimples broke out all over me. I had this crazy feeling that if I could hold him tight enough that everything would wash around us. The kitchen table stood guard, sensibly chaperoning the mad urges I had.

“I wanted to tell you—you know, alone, but…”

I smiled. “You were never going to get away with that.”

“It won’t change anything.” It was a question and a statement and a plea for reassurance all in one.

“Of course it will. But not here, Alex.”

He ignored me, and tears sprang into his eyes. I saw the strain of the past few weeks showing clearly, as well as his fear of the future. “No. Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.” He seemed like he was going to step forward and I flinched; I couldn’t help it. His expression froze, and he turned on his heel. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

And then Val came in. The timing couldn’t have been much worse. I suppose he could have been in my arms, but I hadn’t completely lost my sanity. “Alec,” she said. “your parents—”

Alex pushed by her without a word, but his face was bright red, and he was brushing the tears away with his sleeve.

“Alec? Ed?” She looked sharply at me as the kitchen door closed. “What did you say to him?”

I floundered, caught in an impossible moment. I know my mouth opened but nothing came out.

“For God’s
sake
,” she said. “It’s enough you take…whatever-it-is that’s up with you out on me. On your family. What did you say? You know he’s sensitive!”

When she left, I sat at the kitchen table and wept until I had to pull myself together and see Alex and his family out.

+ + +

That evening was a nightmare I’d rather not remember and the worst row Val and I had ever had. She used the fact that she thought I’d been unkind to Alex as a fulcrum with which to crank up the strain between us.

The children were in bed, and we didn’t shout; one thing we’d learned about married life was to argue and not to shout, but the row was no less acrimonious for being spoken.

“And I’m telling you—again—that I didn’t say anything to him!”

“He was crying, Ed. On the happiest day of his life. Five minutes in the kitchen with you, and you made him cry.”

“Perhaps it’s the strain of the exams, perhaps it was the champagne…”

“Which you gave him, even though no one wanted you to.”

“Christ, I don’t
know
, Val! I don’t know what you want me to say to you—I’ll apologise to him tomorrow!”

Her face was white and she looked straight at me as if she’d never seen me before. “I’m pregnant.”

If I’d been expecting anything, it certainly wasn’t that. It side-swiped me as surely as if she’d smashed me across the head with a crowbar. I stood and stared at her, my breathing shallow and heavy. “What?”

“I’m pregnant.” She watched me closely, and her eyes seemed like echoes of Alex’s—desperate hope that was going down with the ship. “I’ve been meaning to… I hope you’d…” She sat down on the bed. “Ed, if I ask you something, will you promise to be honest with me?”

“Of course. Christ.” There was no limit to how many lies I’d tell my pregnant wife, it seemed. My mind felt frozen-numb. I knew I should be asking questions, I knew I should be on the bed next to her with my arm around her. I should be praising her, reassuring her. There was no one to reassure me.

“Are you having an affair?”

“I…”

She didn’t give me time to answer. “Ed.” She got up and walked across to where I was standing, my back hard against the wardrobe doors. She took hold of my hands. “Ed. You’re my best friend. I’ve seen you in every mood a wife should or could see a husband, but I’ve never seen you like this.” I swallowed but couldn’t speak. “There’s something wrong with you, and I’m frightened.” I wished that she wasn’t so reasonable, that she’d scream at me like some Hollywood movie-wife. “I don’t know you.”

“Please, Val, there’s nothing. I swear.”

She was crying, and I pulled her into my arms. “Just tell me that there’s no one else, that you aren’t sick, that you aren’t going to leave me. Promise me, Ed, and I’ll believe you. That you still want us. All of us.”

My own cowardice made me physically sick, and long after she’d gone to bed, and she’d turned away on her side, I lay awake as my ulcer reminded me what a bastard I really was.

Chapter 22

I know now that she didn’t believe me, but for a while I fooled myself into believing otherwise. The next morning we pushed the inconveniences of the night—things like suspicion and dissent—back into the closets where they belonged, just like English people do. There were other things to discuss now, and other matters to be focussed upon. I tried not to notice how she would touch her stomach when she thought I didn’t notice. We left my joy at the news assumed and unexpressed, and left all announcements and arrangements in her hands.

As time passed, I noticed a look about her, and if I hadn’t had my own secrets I would have suspected her of her own. She would hang up the phone when I walked in a room and I found her once—and only once—going through my wallet. It spoke volumes about what was going on between us that I didn’t even question her about it.

Alex, I clung to. “I can’t breathe,” he said more than once, and I was contrite. “It’s all right,” he’d say. “I like it. I like you like this.” We had no calendar in our haven, but I had one in my head, some terrible doomsday clock worthy of Quatermass. It ticked constantly, cutting away each moment I had left with him.

He was filled with plans and bubbling enthusiasm. “I’m going to live in college, for the first year, anyway. I tried to talk Mum and Dad out of it, because—well—you know, but they insisted, said they can manage with the grant and the scholarship. So you’ll come up. I don’t know if I’ll have to share yet, but,” he leaped astride my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. “Bloody hell, Edward—wouldn’t it be great if I don’t?”

 
I don’t remember promising him anything, but maybe I did. It’s the images that remain clear; perhaps I fill in or erase what I don’t want to remember.

Earlier I said that I still wanted to kiss him, to touch him, to fuck him. There, Alex. I can say it now. It’s a craving that I know will never leave. Making love with him never became repetitive or automatic. His body remained a delight, and even though I had touched every inch of him with some part of me, I never felt that I’d explored him. He was like a fresh fall of snow each time.

Then, like all things, the parting came.

Our last day, our last hours were almost silent. We loved slowly, deliberately. That’s the part I want to remember, not the rest of it as we dressed, almost awkwardly, talking about trains, books and calculus. I don’t want even to write it down, but this is what I set out to do. It wouldn’t be fair to dwell on the last time he was in that room with me and miss the rest of it.