Ollie Always (3 page)

Skint wasn’t helping his concentration. He’d stripped off his jacket and was now sitting in an almost non-existent running vest and very tight shorts. For many hours the previous evening, Ollie had managed to not think about Skint, until, following a link to a funny dog video, just for a change, there had been an advertisement with a man in white underpants. David Gandy. Stretched, inviting, ironic, and selling said pants. And now here he was again, in Ollie’s kitchen. Not an exact replica, of course. Younger. But close enough. Better in some ways. Skint clearly wasn’t wearing
any
underpants, white or not.

“
Do you model?
” was a line Ollie had heard more than once. His denial was nearly always followed by, “
You should, you know
.” He never informed his inquisitors exactly how much of a model he actually was and for whom, as these were things he’d come eleven thousand miles to escape, but, nevertheless, it was always slightly flattering to be told, obliquely, that you were beautiful enough to become an object of desire, even if he suspected he’d be on the heroin-chic side of the business. Sugar-chic, maybe. He wanted to ask Skint this now and possibly follow up the question by offering him a pair of his underpants to pose in. He sighed and brought the tea to the table, and just to punish himself, asked instead, “What’s your wife’s name?”

“Janice. You married?”

Ollie shook his head. Skint was looking around, frowning slightly. “Bit lonely being stuck here on your own? I guess you like that—for writing. You got family back home?”

Ollie nodded. He was getting a good neck workout if nothing else. He sipped his tea, trying not to be distracted by the very solid arm muscles a few feet from him. He could almost taste the sweat on the tip on his tongue, a salty, warm-skin tang that lingered in his mind after certain vivid dreams.

Shortbread.

With a mouthful of the rich, buttery sugar, he felt confident enough to ask, “So, have you fully emigrated?”

Skint shrugged. “For now. I’ll see.”

“It’s hard. The first year. Six years, someone told me once. Then you sort of accept it.”

“Have you made a lot of friends here?”

Two penguins and a snail.
Did they count? Of course they did. He hadn’t seen Speedy for a while though.

When Ollie didn’t reply, the other man stood. “Okay, well, I guess I’d better get going. I just wanted to check you were okay.”

Ollie rose too and tried not to limp too much as he escorted Skint to the door.
Huh, sunshine.
He squinted at the incredible brilliance and decided to be daring and walk out to the gate with his visitor. “Thanks for calling by. And thanks for everything yesterday. I’m not sure I thanked you properly.”

“Don’t worry. I heard faint gratitude in amongst the screaming and crying.”

“What’s wrong?” Skint was wincing as he stretched into a sort of odd hieroglyphic shape.

“Not sure. I think I’ve buggered up an old knee injury lifting…I mean running without stretching first.” Skint gingerly tested the very strong, very attractively rounded and tanned knee with a foot stamp on the road surface and winced again. “Think I’ll walk for a bit. So, anyway, thanks for the tea.”

Ollie caught at his jacket. “Lifting me? You hurt yourself carrying me yesterday?”

Skint chuckled. “You weigh less than my ego. Don’t worry about it.”

“Jesus. Look, can I give you a lift home? I’ll give you a lift. Wait there.” Ollie hobbled away before the other man had time to refuse his offer.

It was only as Ollie was backing his car out of the garage that it occurred to him to wonder if he was being self-destructive again. He was done with that. He’d come eleven thousand miles to get away from the unattainable.
Un
attainable. Not just waiting around to realise he actually wasn’t straight and needed Ollie to win him over to the dark side, the fun side.
Straight
. As in didn’t find other men sexually attractive. As in married. As, in this case, Janice. It was all happening again. A fixation Ollie couldn’t shake, obsession, heartache. If Ed were still alive, he’d possibly be finding this ironic.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Skint was staring at his car. Ollie pouted and said defensively, “Jealously often manifests itself as scorn.”

“But seriously. A BMW Z3?”

“Be careful of your old knees as you get in. The seats are low.”

“Funny.” Skint slid elegantly into the leather seat beside him, his damaged joint apparently not giving him much trouble now.

Ollie rummaged in the glovebox for a moment, his hand briefly brushing the very tight muscle on the other man’s thigh as it passed, and then he handed Skint a pair of black wraparound sunglasses. He donned his own and refused to rise to the provocation of the scornful noises from the passenger seat. When the roof went down and the music came on and he floored the car along the empty road, he noticed the protests quietened. They entirely disappeared in fact. He took the turn to the old farm way too fast, the tyres not catching on the gravel, making the rear end spin. They both laughed at the same time until the rubber caught, and the silver convertible shot up the hill, the sun now directly in their eyes and prickling bare skin.

He deliberately hit the rise in the track too fast as well and felt that delightful lift and settle sensation in his stomach, a flutter of excitement that matched other tension throughout his body, and then they were there, pulled up in front of the old house which Skint now called home.

The lean man ran his fingers through his hair as Ollie put the car into park. “You drive like a maniac.” It was apparently not a criticism.

Ollie turned to reply but then saw what Skint was looking at. They were almost perfectly reflected in the large floor to ceiling living room window. Suddenly, Ollie got why the man had seemed so familiar the previous day: tall, thin, dark haired, straight noses, black wraparound shades and windblown, they could have been brothers. He’d seen a slightly older version of himself; that was all.

“Come in.” Skint climbed out and left his door open, so Ollie was forced to get out anyway to close it, and then it seemed like no big thing to follow the other man into the house.

It was huge. Much bigger than his little villa down on the coast. Inside, it was stripped bare, floors original rimu, walls still papered from a long-past style, which was charming in its own way. Ollie wandered from room to room. With no furniture, it didn’t seem rude to do so. “How do you…?” He came across a mat on the floor with a neatly folded blanket and some boxes spilling clothes, answering his own question. No wonder the wife had decided to wait in England for a while.

“Is your container still in storage?”

“Huh? Oh, no. Not until it’s—I didn’t have much. Sold my car and hopped on the plane. Thought I’d buy new stuff here.”

Good luck with that then
. Ollie nodded though to be polite. Either the man was a fool or disingenuous. He hadn’t decided which yet.

The kitchen still had its original, solid wood units, and there was the obligatory kettle on a counter, looking anachronistic in such faded, colonial elegance. Ollie stood patiently while Skint made some tea. When it was ready, he waved Ollie to the patio doors and then out to a veranda and a set of exquisite rimu chairs around a large, tiled table. “Nice.”

“Thanks.”

Ollie hesitated. “You made them?”

Skint shrugged, but his pleasure in the furniture was unmistakable. He ran a hand over the back of one chair. “I had some help from the guy who owned this place. He helped by sort of making it all but letting me think I did. I came over every day whilst I was recc…waiting for the house details to be settled.” He waved toward a large metal barn. “His workshop. ’S why when your…why I chose the place. Came as a job lot.”

“You’re a carpenter? Furniture maker? Is there a name for furniture maker?”

“Yeah. Impoverished mug.”

Ollie dutifully laughed and perched on the edge of one of the chairs slightly gingerly. Homemade. Who knew if it was safe?

Observing this display with amusement, Skint sat too and put his leg up on another chair, idly stroking his knee. Ollie watched the strong hand with renewed fascination, as if each stroke were massaging deep into his own flesh, and not in an idle way at all.

“So that’s what you do? Make furniture?”

Skint scratched his stubble. “Not really. It’s just a new hobby.” He hesitated then added, “I’m retired.”

Ollie’s brows rose in surprise, which he knew was a little unfair from someone who’d never worked at all.

Skint quickly clarified, as if he didn’t want Ollie to point out the obvious, “I retired early. From the army.”

“Oh.”

“Took a course in woodworking for my resettlement.”

“Oh.”

“Janice is still in.”

“Oh—huh? Sorry? What?”

“Janice, my wife. She’s still in the army.”

“Oh. Isn’t that a little awkward? I mean…for being married?”

“Yes.”

Uh-huh.

“Is that how you met—in the army?”

“Yeah, she arrested…my best mate.”

Ollie spluttered his tea, and Skint added, “She’s RMP—military police?”

“What had he done?”

“Nothing. Anyway, tell me, what are you doing here? I can’t work it out—stuck out here all on your own.”

Hmm,
mutual
pondering. That was interesting.

“I came out here to write a book. I’m not having much success.”

“How far have you got?”

“The title.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not even sure I like that.”

“Which is…?”

“Stranger in a Strange Land.”

“I think that’s been done.”

“Tell me about it. Every bloody thing’s been done. Go on, come up with a title, and I’ll tell you if it’s been done.”

Skint closed his eyes, theatrically thinking. “Scat For Beginners.”

This time the tea went over the table, and Ollie apologised, laughing and wiping his mouth. “You’ve got me. I’m not sure it would sell though. And I wouldn’t fancy the research.”

“You could start with your adventures in shit yesterday.”

“Even
better
title.
Adventures in Shit
.”

“There you go. Now you just have to write it.”

Ollie’s face fell a little, and he nodded, picking at a thread on his jeans. He felt under scrutiny but didn’t want to look up and see if he was imagining it.

“So, Ollie-Always, I was thinking about exploring Dunedin tomorrow. Fancy showing me around?”

Ollie felt a stab of something dangerous in his belly. Warning or excitement he couldn’t tell, and to cover while he thought about it, replied lightly, “I have thirty seconds spare, sure.”

Skint frowned. “It’s not that bad a place, is it?”

“Oh, no.” Ollie smirked and added, “Not in comparison to Hull.”

The other man snorted. “Sunderland?”

“Preston.”

“Bradford.”

Ollie winced. “Okay, Dunedin tomorrow it is. Shall I pick you up?”

Skint narrowed his eyes and looked up at the sky for a moment. “I think maybe I’ll hire a car for the day…” Ollie began to take umbrage at the implied slight to his driving, but the other man waved this away and said seriously, “It might look a bit weird? The two of us together in your car?”

Ollie mulled this over for a long time. So long, that Skint had the grace to fidget uncomfortably and mutter, “Forget I said that. Yeah, that would be great. Ten too early for you?”

Ollie steadily held his gaze on the dark-haired man, which was a complete waste of time, as Skint wasn’t raising his eyes from his knee. “No, ten will be fine. I’ll see you then.”

He rose and began to walk back into the house to his car.

A hand on his sleeve stopped him. He hadn’t heard Skint come up behind him. “Hey, I’m sorry. That was a dumb thing to say…only…” Skint lifted his eyes again, as if he could find more inspiration from the ceiling than from his previous attempt to find it in the sun and finished, “My friend? He was arrested on suspicion of being gay—or indulging in homosexual acts anyway, which is how it’s termed in the army. It was all complete shit, but the investigation sucked all his friends in, too. It was kinda traumatic for everyone. The most innocent things twisted around to sound…Well, you know. He had a car. Like yours. But without the motorsport rims you’ve got. His were only chrome. Shit really, compared to yours. God, I’m digging myself in like a fucking trenching exercise on Sennybridge. Sorry. Again.”

“You like my rims?”

Skint let out a breath of relief and sank his head down to his chest. “Yes, Ollie-Always, I like your rims. I will be very grateful if your rims and the car that sits on them show me around Dunedin tomorrow.”

CHAPTER THREE

Who said you had to be kind to strangers? Not Ollie.

Still smarting over the gay slur to his car, he decided Skint needed to see the peninsular on his welcome-to-Dunedin tour—hairpin bends, no rails, drops on either side that gave vertigo a new definition, no central barrier, and barely passing room for two vehicles. It was just as well, he reflected, they had the entire road to themselves.

He was slightly annoyed to discover that his passenger now appeared entirely unruffled by his driving, as if, after his faux pas the previous day, he was determined to be more circumspect. Perhaps he was simply trying to be macho, given he’d apparently turned gay as soon as he sat alongside Ollie in the car. Ollie was irritated, but he was also slightly pleased by the man’s comment. He couldn’t help but wonder how many people were observing them (given the road was entirely empty) and thinking they were a couple.
Lovers
. Even the thought of this made him want to grin. He risked a quick glance at the perfect profile next to him. It was the first time he’d seen Skint out of running gear, and it wasn’t a disappointment. The guy was made to wear clothes, his long, lean form shifting with ease in the soft denim of his scruffy jeans, his toned arms stretching the sleeves of his old T-shirt. Focusing on the stretch of cotton, Ollie once more had the nagging feeling that he was missing something. Clearly, more concentrated study was required…his thoughts drifted pleasantly to—