Ollie Always (21 page)

Tentatively, Ollie stretched out his hand. He had no experience with dogs but had always been told as a boy to ask an owner first if it was okay to pet one. This dog gave his own permission and lifted a paw to pat Ollie back, clearly a tricky procedure with one missing limb. Plonked down firmly, butt secure, the dog leant into the caress with a deep groan of pleasure.

“You could do that to me, and I think I’d make that noise, too.”

Ollie closed his eyes.

He swallowed deeply.

He looked one final time at the dog and then up at Tom Collins, who was standing with the sun haloed behind his head.

“Hello, Ollie.”

Ollie rose. “
James
.”

Tom gestured helplessly. “We’ve stayed friends. He’s a surprisingly good liar for someone with a face like that.”

“Aren’t we all?”

Tom nodded. There was a truth in that he obviously couldn’t deny.

“It lost its leg.” Ah, the old tongue-tied Ollie was returning. What a dumb thing to say in such circumstances.

Tom only shrugged. “He gained a lot more I reckon.” His hand appeared to instinctively go to the dog’s head, and the ridiculous, spiky topknot leant toward Tom’s thigh. “Do you have time for a cup of tea?”

Ollie had all the time in the world.

§§§

They sat together, listening to the singer in the warm New Zealand sunshine, the dog between them, his head, now that they were sitting, almost level with their shoulders.

“You look good, Ollie. Not sure about the hair though.”

Ollie ran his hand once more over the bristly buzz-cut and said, “Wow, we have the same haircut, dude. Must be fate.” Then he twitched his lips and added, “Sorry, it was going to be my chat up line when I used to watch you running.”

“You didn’t need it.”

“No, I didn’t. You were watching me.”

“I wasn’t going to talk about your hair though.”

“I suppose I should ask you how you’ve been.” Ollie glanced over at the tent. “But it seems rather redundant. It’s beautiful. Is it going well—the furniture business?”

Tom shrugged, and Ollie sensed a stressed, haunted hunger about the other man that was unmissable when you were tuned into it. Once the
me, me, me
of life had ceased, hearing other people’s pain became a great deal easier.

“James has been a real mate. He knew a farmer who lets me use an old shearers’ shed.”

“As a workshop?”

“Well to live in as well, to be honest, but it’s great. It’s okay. I get to work in the middle of the night if the spirit takes me. James also loaned me the money to buy the tools, and I’m paying him back a dollar at a time.”

“Shouldn’t you be over there then…selling?”

“Oh, my neighbour will cover it for me. That’s Mary…she knits dogs’ coats.”

It was a cue for them both to start patting the dog furiously. Live three-legged dogs were even better than funny cats on video for procrastination.

A very long silence fell between them. The singer had gone a cappella, his resonant voice telling of heartbreak and love, and suddenly it was just too much.

Ollie felt his throat seizing up and his eyes betraying him. A year and a half and he’d fought his demons, held tight to Bartleby and survived, but a dumb song and a shaggy dog had undone him.

He put his arm over his face to hide the evidence of his weakness, then lowered his head, and shook off a hand on his shoulder. The hold remained, however, and the fingers squeezed tight. “Dog needs a walk to cool off in the river. Come on, Ollie.”

He was heaved to his feet and steered around the crowds. Fumbling, Ollie managed to get his wraparound sunglasses back on, and, under their cover, he was able to walk and follow Tom down toward the sparkling water.

The dog immediately headed for the deepest part of the flow and plonked down, tail sending up diamonds of shivering light as it beat its happiness.

Tom towed Ollie toward a stand of trees and then stood close, as if shielding him from more than unwelcome curiosity. Bullets wouldn’t have gone through that solid body and taken Ollie down.

Suddenly, without warning, as Ollie tried to regain control, Tom swore violently and seized him in an embrace even tighter than the one he’d given him by the cold lake in Queenstown. This time, with no leather jackets, just soft cotton shirts between them, and in the heat, the hug was much more intense and personal.

Just as suddenly, Tom pushed Ollie away, but he had hold of Ollie’s shoulders and it turned into a shake, a hard, angry shake, and then he was pulled back and crushed, but Ollie wasn’t the same man Tom had known over a year ago. Sure, he’d just cried. He allowed himself that little meltdown. He’d been sitting next to a waffle van, listening to a man singing about good dreams about dying, with a three-legged dog chewing on the end of its cute neckerchief. Life sometimes competed with fiction to undo a man. But he wasn’t that Ollie any more. Sometimes he was Oliver, and more often than not Oliver King, who faced hard knocks head on.

Ollie lifted his arms and shoved Tom forcibly away. Then, because he could, and because it felt incredibly good to do so, he punched him.

Caught completely unawares, Tom stumbled and tripped over the roots of the trees and went down, skidding a little on his backside.

Almost immediately the dog appeared from the river. For one moment, Ollie thought he’d made a bad error. He’d known Tom wouldn’t hit him back, he knew that much about the other man, but he’d forgotten about the dog. Fortunately, the dog had merely sensed some fun in the offering and pounced on Tom, gleefully flicking water off its coat in great heaving rolls of joy.

Tom scrambled to his feet, holding his jaw. Freshly shaved, no longer needing his heavy stubble to ruin Ollie’s life, the bruise was already beginning to show.

Tom licked his lips as if testing to see if he still had all his teeth, and admitted gratingly, “I was owed that. I should have told you I was working for your mother. We thought after Barnes fucked up so badly it was better if it appeared you chose your own help. So that was a freebie.”

Ollie shrugged. “I didn’t punch you for those lies.”

Tom rubbed his jaw and opened his mouth to ask the obvious, but Ollie helped him out. He was like that—polite and helpful to older, less able people. “It was for the cowardice.”

“I—”

“You’re still lying—to yourself. Not to me. I know.”

“What—?”

“I can see it for the first time now. I knew. In my heart of hearts, I knew when I looked into your eyes that we’d met before, but now it’s like a switch has flicked, and I can see you quite clearly.”

Tom’s expression became instantly veiled. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Wales? On a mountain? Every time I fucked up and failed, you were there, telling me I was more than that, better than that. Why didn’t you tell her that you knew me? Why did you lie to her, to me, to everyone? Why didn’t you bloody
tell me
!”

Tom grabbed him again. “You were
eighteen
! You were my
charge
! My responsibility! You were a schoolboy! What kind of man falls in love with a schoolboy? A scared, gentle boy! I’ll tell you, Ollie, because you are still just as dumb as you were last year despite all this fucking—” He waved angrily at Ollie’s body as if the muscles and health were a personal affront to him. “I’ll tell you what kind of man does that, the kind in those bloody books you despise. Well, I hated them more than you do, and I didn’t even understand them! I couldn’t even read them properly, because I needed a fucking dictionary every—why are you laughing? Why are you always laughing when I’m trying to—?”

Ollie hiccupped to a stop, seized the front of Tom’s shirt and said, “Read this, you utter fuckwit,” and he pulled Tom against him, well able to initiate a kiss even more intense than the only one they’d ever shared together. It was shock when Ollie realised this. It seemed as though in his dreams he’d been kissing Tom Collins his entire life.

Tom responded even more fiercely and willingly than he had in all those night-time imaginings. For of course, even when Ollie was being brave day after day and improving his own life before he sought to make someone else’s perfect, he’d been old Ollie in his thoughts at night: the frightened boy, fading into shadows and dusty draughts of air, as his other half lived his life in the sunlight. In his dreams, Tom had sometimes turned his head from the kisses and mockingly explained to Ollie that if he’d wanted this he’d have pursued him to England. If he’d wanted this, he’d have continued to phone…

Ollie shoved Tom away. “Why didn’t you follow me? Why didn’t you keep calling?”

“Oh, fuck you, Ollie.” Tom heaved him back on, and the kiss continued until Tom broke it. “Do I have to stick at being dumb? Can’t I be proud as well?”

Ollie thought about this for a second then resumed the kiss and mumbled against Tom’s warm lips, “Okay. That works for me.”

Tom began laughing, and it was hard to kiss him then so they parted ruefully, rubbing at their mouths idly, not letting their gazes drop. How had he not recognised those eyes? He’d even thought, earth, security, home. No fucking wonder. The guy had found him buried in a hollow beneath a tree and taken him to safety. Ollie shook his head wonderingly.

Tom smiled as if he could read Ollie’s thoughts. Perhaps he could. “What now?”

It was a fraught question. They both turned at the same time to watch the dog, which had returned to the shallows and was digging enthusiastically.

“I hope that’s gold he’s finding. What’s he called, by the way? Tripod?”

Tom frowned a little. “Dog. I’m not very good with words. I told you…dumb.”

Ollie smirked. “Pitiful. He’s Bartleby.”

Tom wrinkled his nose and tried this out—softly. Then he slung an arm over Ollie’s shoulders and pulled him in close. Ollie tucked his hand into Tom’s back pocket and murmured, “I’m not eighteen anymore. I thought I should mention that—in answer to your question about what comes next.”

He saw Tom glance down, and chuckled. “Yeah, it’s the same age as me and equally willing and able.”

Tom sagged a little against him and nodded. “I have absolutely no idea how we’re going to make this work.”

Ollie began to lead him back toward the bank. Tom whistled for the dog. “You make furniture with your hands. I create new worlds with my words. I think we’ll work something out, don’t you?”

Tom simply smiled and slipped his hand into Ollie’s pocket, too. In public, it was a huge concession, Ollie knew. Tom’s brows rose. “What the fuck?”

Ollie began to laugh. “I gave up sugar for you. So I think the least I can do is offer you one of my nuts…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It wasn’t going to be easy. Ollie knew this. Sitting in the warm sunshine alongside the dog, watching the crowd browsing the tents while Tom stood by his beautiful chairs, probably selling more with his features than his less-than-fluent sales pitch, Ollie felt as he had back in the hotel in London that first day: an overwhelming fear of the future and what it held for them.

But he used the word
them
in his mind and that was all he really needed to know. The rest would work itself out. As he’d said to Tom, they created their own world now. Who said fiction couldn’t bleed into real life?

Every so often, as Ollie studied the features he was learning all over again, he could see similar thoughts crossing Tom’s mind fleetingly. Mostly, Tom seemed…almost drunk on happiness. Ollie would have used the word giddy if Tom were a character in a book, but the man in the flesh was too substantial for that term of flight and fancy. But those little glances of terror and uncertainty were there too—mostly, Ollie noted with some satisfaction, whenever Tom had forgotten to look for him, check that he was still sitting at the rear of the tent, reassuring himself that he hadn’t just up and run away again. Ollie wasn’t unduly concerned. It was hard enough contemplating what they were embarking upon without thinking he was doing it entirely alone. They needed to work through it together.

After a while, Ollie got bored with listening to Tom stumble through another explanation about the furniture to someone who had stopped to stroke over its glossy perfection. He rose and strolled into the avenue, amidst the throng, and with skill and knowledge honed from over two decades of being related to and socialising with the elite, Ollie separated the wheat from the chaff, the wealthy from the merely happy and good-hearted, and targeted them. He brought them over to Tom’s stall. He spoke to them with Old Etonian bonhomie and named dropped with aplomb. He managed to make six hundred dollars for a handmade Adirondack chair seem such a bargain that not only could they afford one, they in fact needed a whole set to grace their station homesteads, to sit on whilst they counted their milk share yields. Ollie was a bit less sure on terminology when he dropped the Fonterra shares part in, and was tempted to enliven the conversation by asking if they suffered from dag.

He winked at the speechless, astonished Tom. It wasn’t surprising he was silent. He was receiving an order for over three thousand dollars worth of patio furniture.

Ollie headed back out into the crowd and selected his next victims. It wasn’t difficult. Pick the thinnest woman with the best skin, work out which older man she was attached to and bring them over.

Tom had to stop him after the third sale. Seventeen thousand dollars worth of orders. He put a hand on Ollie’s sleeve, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow. “I’m only one guy, Ollie. It took me all year to make these.”

Ollie looked across at the samples. “So? Hire someone to help.”

“But…” Tom’s frown deepened. “The shed is really small, and I’ve only got one…”

Ollie cupped Tom’s cheeks, resisted kissing him, as this might be a craft festival but it was still New Zealand, and enunciated very clearly, “Me. You’ve got one
me
, Tom.”

Tom gritted his teeth. “I’m not going to live on your mother’s money.”

Ollie shrugged. “Neither am I.” He felt his grin breaking out, and so he added, “I’ve sold a book.” He felt a little guilty doing the logic thing again—letting Tom assume that the one statement referred to the other. He’d just spent his book advance on the little bag of chestnuts. His trust fund was paying for everything else.