Scrap Metal (18 page)

I leaned towards him. My hand was still locked in his, getting crushed against the back of the sofa. Now I was so close to him—now I could feel his assent, like a sparking cloud of fireflies around me—I hardly knew what to do with myself. Blindly I reached and grasped the fabric of his shirt with my free hand, crushing it. He took hold of my face, guiding me in, and I closed my eyes, helplessly opening my mouth as it brushed over his. Hot tears stung between my lashes. I was afraid my ragged breathing would break into sobs, but he pulled me home, silenced me in a clumsy, bruising kiss.

A sweetness I’d forgotten life could hold burst inside me. I moaned, and his tongue edged past my lips, the movement rough and shy. Finally he let go of my hand, seized my shoulders and drew me down on top of him, as far as the stupid little sofa would allow. His kiss was sending waves of seismic gold through my whole body, bearing me somehow past the danger zone of coming like a horny teenager inside my jeans. I could hang on. As long as he wanted, even if my skin was burning, my cock trapped and straining for erection in our tight press of hip to thigh. God, I’d roll him off the couch, hit the rug and tussle with him, love him into such an ecstasy that he wouldn’t be able to tell where he stopped and I started…

“Oh, Nic! Nichol, I can’t.”

I tore back. I braced up on my arms and stared at him. His hands were down the back of my boxers, clutching my arse. I could feel his shaft against my belly. Which part of that meant
can’t?

But he wasn’t there with me in the moment anymore. I felt our severance, a door slamming shut, a guillotine blade slicing down. We lay unmoving for a second. Then he twisted out from under me and crashed to his knees on the floor.

I knelt beside him. He’d balled up with his back to the sofa, his brow pressed tight to his knees. Now it was his turn for a fit of Tourette’s—he was cursing a blue streak, the words indistinct but his fury and frustration clear. When I put out a hand, he flinched from me.

“Cameron. Jesus, what is it?”

He jerked his head up. He was almost unrecognisable with bitterness. “Don’t,” he rasped. “I’ve done it to you again. I’ll get out of here, okay? I’ll go.”

“What—if I can’t fuck you, you can’t stay in my house anymore?” Maybe he hadn’t expected me to be so blunt. Whatever it had been, he caught a breath. I tried the reach to his shoulder again, and this time he didn’t move. “You haven’t done anything to me—nothing I won’t get over. I’m not an unexploded bomb.” The fact that I felt like one was my own problem. Had to be. He was still rock hard and so was I. It wasn’t bloody fair. “But you have got to talk to me. Right now.”

“I can’t.”

“Is it a health thing? Because I haven’t been an angel either. Archie was my first boyfriend, not my only one. We’ll use—”

“Nichol, stop.”

“Did McGarva hurt you? Pimp you out?”

“No! He had boys for that. Girls too. He wasn’t gonna use the accountant.”

“What, then?”

He uncoiled. For an instant I was scared. This was maybe the face Joe McKenzie had seen just before Cam had tried to put his lights out. “Don’t you get it? I’m not good enough for you—never could be, never will. I’m dirty. I’m fucked up. I’ve done things, seen things you couldn’t even imagine. And you—you’ve never even had a bad thought in your life. You’re not fucking capable.”

I looked into the space between our two bodies. “I’m having bad thoughts right now.”

“Oh, I know about those ones. I know you’ve had your boyfriends. I can tell by the light in your eyes, the way you dance and move that lovely arse of yours. But you grew up here, Nichol. Your heart’s as clean as seawater. You’re—”

“Don’t you dare say
innocent
. I’m twenty-five years old. I’ve survived the death of my family out here, and…” I ran out of qualifications. “And even if I am, if there’s some kind of…
corruption
going on around here, which I don’t believe for a second—don’t I get to choose?”

“You don’t get to choose it from me. No.” He rolled away and got to his feet. I watched helplessly while he went to the table and began packing up his books and paperwork.

“Cam, whatever it is—I can stand it, really I can.”

“No.” He put the lid on the box. “I’ll get started on this lot tomorrow, if you want me to. Unless I’ve screwed with your head and your cock too much, in which case I’ll be gone by the morning.”

“Don’t make me answer that. I’ve made enough of a fool of myself tonight here anyway.”

He stopped on his way to the door. “Oh, no. You’re not a fool. You’re…” He put out a hand as if he would touch my face, as if he could see something there no one else could. “Beautiful Nichol. You’ve got no idea, have you? No idea at all.”

Chapter Ten

The next morning I got up a little earlier than usual, and I brought him tea and toast on a tray. I wanted to show him there were no hard feelings, that my head and my cock could cope with him just fine. I also wanted to make certain he was still there, and my heart was beating fast against my ribs as I padded upstairs and tapped the edge of the tray against the door.

There he was—sitting up with a confusion of dreams dissolving from around him, focussing and giving me a surprised and lovely smile. I’d brought my own breakfast too, and a couple of the newspapers we’d picked up in Brodick the day before. I sat on the end of the bed, handed him a paper and unfolded one of my own. Our silence, at first tense, became easier, aided by the chacking of the jackdaws who’d colonised the chimney above his room and were building their nests on the principle of dropping twigs down it until enough of them stuck.

When we did start to talk, it was ordinary—tasks for the day, how best to distribute the sheep pills. I was ordinary too I was sure. I’d omitted to brush my hair, and I had on a particularly ancient jumper. I was fairly certain I was nobody’s beautiful anything.

Harry inadvertently helped us back onto an even keel. He was waiting in the barnyard when we went down, and over the next few days loaded onto us such a regime of extra work that the idea of sex became no more than that—an idea, a ghost, a nice warm thought between falling into bed and dropping into worn-out sleep. He’d developed an anxiety to fix up all the barns and outbuildings, finish roofing work and the construction of the new pens, before the winter. It had just turned May—I saw my ma out in the lanes, gathering armfuls of hawthorn blossom, and had time to smile at her before the light changed and took her away—and I tried to convince Harry we had all summer for the work, but he growled and called me so many variants on
shiftless
, Gaelic having plenty of them, that it was easier simply to run and lift rocks when he told me.

On Tuesday afternoon I found a message on the phone from Archie, reminding me about the get-together for Reggie Fletcher in Brodick. I thought I was too tired, but that evening, stripping out of one set of sweat-damped clothes, it struck me that it might be nice not to haul into another pair of overalls ready for the late shift. I reconsidered Archie’s invitation. I’d been dancing to Harry’s unrelenting tune all day, and I was well ahead of schedule. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that I could take a night off.

In the back of my wardrobe were some clothes I hadn’t touched since I’d folded them into a rucksack and left behind the lights of the Edinburgh scene. I reached in and extracted a pair of charcoal-grey designer jeans. The name was stamped in gold across the butt and might as well have read
queer
. Man, I’d loved those jeans. They fit me as if they’d been made for me and had drawn the late-night talent down like flies. I threw them on the bed and regarded them thoughtfully, hands on my hips. I had a shirt that went with them, delicately patterned in grey and white. That was a good fit too, following the lines of my shoulders and waist. Nothing squeezing, nothing spare. A black leather belt with a heavy but plain silver buckle. I checked that there was no one about to question my manoeuvres, had a shower and washed the plaster dust out of my hair.

When I came to put the shirt on, I found things had changed a bit—I had to leave the top two buttons open to accommodate a new inch or so across my shoulders, but I didn’t dislike the effect of that, in the fly-specked square of mirror which was all I had for the display of my vanities. The jeans still clung to me lovingly.

In my top drawer I found a bottle of cologne bestowed on me by my last Edinburgh lover. I didn’t dare put any on—Harry would detect it from miles away—so I sprayed a little in the air and walked through it, a trick taught me by a female dorm mate, and apparently the classy way to wear scent. Well, I was sure I could still dredge up a bit of class.

I went slowly down the stairs. I hadn’t yet made my mind up to go anywhere, and I was idly turning back the cuffs of my shirt when I noticed the kitchen door standing open, light spilling out into the hall. Harry was sitting at the far end of the table. He looked subtly different, and it took me a second to work out why—he was wearing his reading glasses, the ones he’d rejected in disgust because he’d been prescribed bifocals, something only required by old men. The cardboard box containing our financial paperwork was open on the table, and Cameron was gingerly tendering to him the book of accounts. I noted with amusement that although Cam had seated himself reasonably close, he was just out of cuffing range. I stopped on the stairs to look at the pair of them, so serious in the lamplight. Quite a tableau. Harry’s brow was knitted, but he took the book, and when Cam pointed out the income column on the left—a tactful place to start—he planted one thick forefinger on it and began to read.

I’d made no noise, but Cam looked up. He stared for a moment as if he didn’t recognise me, and then—first time in my life I’d ever produced such an effect—his mouth fell open. Silently he pushed back from the table and came to intercept me at the foot of the stairs.

“Hiya. You two all right in there?”

“Yeah. I’ve told him I’m scheming to cheat the taxman, try to get him onside that way. Bloody
hell
, Nic. You look good enough to eat.”

Eat me, then
. It was on the very tip of my tongue. There he was, taking me in from crown to boots with every appearance of pure hunger, and there was I, fancying the pants off him so bad I’d have leaned over the banister for him right now, provided we’d locked Harry up in the kitchen. This was bloody ridiculous.

“Ta,” I said lamely. “I was thinking of maybe going out.”

“To meet Archie?”

I nodded. Oh, he didn’t like that. It was nothing to do with his shady past, either—lights came into his eyes I hadn’t seen before, a little touch of hot green to set off the violet. I considered telling him it was a whole bunch of mates I was meeting, not just my ex. Then I decided there was nothing wrong with worrying him a bit on that account. “Just for a few hours. Everything’s done here, more or less. Can you manage?”

“Yeah, sure. Have a good time.”

Cue for me to go. My wallet was on the hall table, the keys to the Toyota hanging by the door. Not the most elegant vehicle for a night on the lash, but it was that or the quad bike.

I didn’t want to move. I loved the way he was looking at me. And he was planted right in front of me, not visibly inclined to let me past.

“I think I’ll just sneak out,” I said faintly. “Harry’ll call me ten types of fairy if he sees this outfit. Will you cover for me?”

“I’ll tell him the urge came upon you to drystone the pasture by moonlight or something. Leave him to me.” He leaned on the newel post. His fingers traced the enigmatic patterns in its ancient black oak. I waited, allowing him time to come up with his delaying tactic—my destination tonight was by no means certain, and all these bonny clothes could come off just as easily as they had gone on. It was chilly in his bare little bedroom, but well soundproofed, and we would soon warm up. “I was thinking…”

“Yes?”

“Ways we could rustle up a bit of cash. You know the broken tractors in the barn? I’ve tried everything I know to fix them, but I think they’ve gone the journey.”

I struggled to focus. “Yes. Yeah, I know them.”

“They’re just rusting in there. Looks like you’ve accumulated a whole load of other scrap over the years as well. I was thinking we could sell it off for parts or meltdown. Metal prices are still at a premium, so…”

“Oh, right. Archie said one of our neighbours got ripped off for a whole lot of it.” I didn’t mind Cam’s tiny flinch at the sound of his name.
Yes, Archie.
“Still, though, how would we sell it? I’ve often thought it’d be easier to let it be nicked.”

He looked at me from under his eyelashes. I had an uncomfortable sensation that he was reading my mind. “Well, there’s this thing,” he said softly, one corner of his mouth quirking up. “It’s new, and I’m not sure it’ll come to anything. But it’s called the
internet
, and there’s this giant mart on it called eBay, and—”

“Shut up,” I told him, grinning. “Surely we could never eBay that lot.”

“I already took the liberty of trying. I listed it as a job lot in the net cafe at Lamlash. For pick up only, obviously, but I bet the dealers will be down like locusts.”

“Okay. That was a great idea.” Then a better one occurred to me, and I forgot my urge to tease him. “Oh, you know what? You go through it and see if there’s anything that sparks your creative drives. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these scrap-metal sculptures of yours going on.”

“No need for that. Let’s just sell the lot.”

“Seriously. What else would you need? Alistair had a phase of trying to patch stuff together—I think there’s gauntlets out there somewhere, a mask, cutters. And what do you call those welding guns?”

“Oxyacetylene torches.”

“That’s it. He had one of those. Why not?”

“Because we’re trying to make you a profit, not set me up as George Rickey in your barn. Still, though, if anything’s left over…”

“You’ll think about it? Good.” I wasn’t sure why I was filled with such sudden enthusiasm for this project, except that I liked to see people doing what they loved from time to time, and not just what they had to. Maybe I was projecting my own painful desire to lose myself in the joys of Chomsky’s universal grammar once more. No. I wanted what was good for Cam. And suddenly I was deeply ashamed of myself for trying to rattle his cage. “Listen, this thing tonight isn’t just with—”