Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (16 page)

‘
So, the famous cellist.’ Gary extended a businesslike hand. ‘Last time I saw you was …’

‘
I know,’ said Adam. ‘My christening.’

‘
I’m sorry,’ said Gary. ‘We do say the most stupid things once we’ve passed the age of thirty. You must forgive me.’

Adam smiled, so it could be presumed that he did. ‘I’ve seen you on television in England sometimes. Only I don’t remember it very well …’ Adam stopped in confusion. He had meant to be nice; it had just come out wrong.

‘
Touché,’ said Gary. ‘It
was
rather a long time ago.’

Jennifer
made quite a fuss over dinner that evening. She ‘set the little plates on top of the big ones’ as the French say, and quite literally do. In honour of Gary’s arrival and also to console Adam for what she guessed were the rigours of the rentrée she came up with a colourful vegetable terrine, a
filet de boeuf en croûte
and a chocolate mousse which came after, not before the cheese. (Jennifer had quickly adapted to the French order of courses.) There was red wine: Morgon, from the Beaujolais region a little over a hundred miles to the south. Adam was just awakening to the enjoyment and knowledge of wine, thanks in part to his father and in part to his visits with Sylvain to the bar at Noidant-le-Rocheux. He regretted that this new appreciation was developing towards the end of his stay in France rather than at the beginning. He doubted whether wine of the quality he was getting used to would appear quite so regularly on the table once they were back in Britain.

Gary
was a charming and amusing dinner-table companion. He was enthusiastic in his praise of Jennifer’s cooking, and full of gratitude for the invitation to come and stay with them all in the first place. The peace and quiet was exactly what he needed, he said, in order to finish his commission for the Avignon festival. There was a deadline and he was afraid that, in the bustle of Paris, he would never have met it. ‘ You can stop concerts and cancel lessons all you like,’ he said. ‘ But unless you physically remove yourself some hundreds of miles they never let you alone. And I’m far too soft to say no to people.’ Adam looked at Gary and wondered if the self-deprecating claim were true.

Gary
smiled back at him. ‘ I’m sure I’ll be spending quite a lot of time just walking in this wonderful countryside you’ve found to bury yourselves in. Even driving up here this afternoon was an eye-opener. I’ve never been to the region before. Do you know what they call it in Paris?
La Champagne Pouilleuse
, the louse-ridden corner of the Champagne. They don’t know what they’re missing. It’s beautiful.’

Adam
was startled by the idea of Gary at large in the woods and meadows that he had come to think of as the private domain of Sylvain and himself. This must have shown itself on his face because Gary immediately looked at him and said: ‘ I suppose you feel a composer should spend all day crouched over the piano with sheets of manuscript paper blowing about all over the room. Did you see that film about Mahler?’ Adam thought he had. Certainly Gary’s picture had chimed exactly with his own idea of how Gary should spend his day. It fitted his own schemes very well, Gary’s presence in the house giving cover to his intended absences in the company of Sylvain. Gary roaming the plateau at the same time as Adam and his lover would rather upset his tidy plan. Still, he was sure that things would work out somehow.

Gary
continued. ‘It was Brahms, you know, who said, “If you want to compose you should go for long walks in the woods.” But, as usual with Brahms, not being there to hear him say it, you can’t be sure whether he said it with a smile or with terrifying teutonic
Ernst
. Do you compose?’

‘
No,’ said Adam, sounding quite shocked by the idea.

Gary
laughed. ‘It’s not such a terrible thing to do. All players should compose as well as play. I know your mother doesn’t, but she’s excused because she had you instead. But you should. Even if you find your best audience is the waste-paper basket.’

‘
I don’t think I have a talent for it. Even though I do enjoy long walks in the woods.’ He had tried, feebly, to be witty but immediately regretted it.

‘
Perhaps we could take a walk together sometimes,’ Gary responded smoothly. ‘ You could show me the best ways to go.’ But Adam thought he detected for the first time a hint of diffidence in his voice, as if a brush-off by a sixteen-year-old boy might actually be wounding.

Adam
was gentle enough, on a good day, to try to avoid hurting people, even by accident. ‘Yes, why not,’ he said brightly, but then quickly steered the conversation back to music.

Next day
Adam thought about explaining in advance that he would be late home from school but decided against it. As a tactic it would only set a precedent. He would simply be late, and as he intended to be late every afternoon for the foreseeable future it would be better to establish the fact brazenly and without explanation from the start. Easier to concoct a reason from time to time if anyone thought to ask him than to have to produce phoney explanations up front on a daily basis.

The time bubble that he planned to allow himself every day between school and arriving home was to be set aside for Sylvain.
However he was still uncertain as to how to engineer their first meeting when he stepped off the school bus at the bleak little crossroads just outside Courcelles. There were three possibilities, one agreeable but time-wasting: to wander the woods and hills randomly until his path and Sylvain’s might fortuitously cross; it could take weeks; he ruled it out as being pointless. The other two were both stark and unappealing: walk up to the front door of Sylvain’s family’s farm and knock on it, or call on Pierre the vet on the off chance that he might know something about Sylvain’s movements. After a half minute’s indecision during which he watched the bus trundle away in its permanent trail of brown smoke, he decided on the last option. He had taken the precaution of cycling to the bus stop that morning and concealing his bike on the far side of the hedge. Now he retrieved it and set off down the road that wound past Lac de la Mouche towards St. Martin, conscious that at any moment he might pass his father coming the other way in the car. But there was no alternative; the off-road walk would have taken over an hour.

Arriving at the vets’ surgery he took a deep breath and knocked.
It was Pierre who came to the door. He looked slightly surprised to see Adam but greeted him with a smile nonetheless. ‘ We were expecting you yesterday,’ he said. ‘ As it was we had to say good-bye to the buzzard without you.’

‘
It was the
rentrée
,’ said Adam. ‘I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘
That’s what I guessed,’ said Pierre with a half-smile. ‘ Anyway, I drove Sylvain back to the spot where you found the bird and let her go.’

‘
And?’

‘
And that was that. The break had mended well. She flew off a bit slowly at first – the muscles will take a little time to rebuild their strength – but she flew straight and well. She didn’t look back or anything; animals aren’t like that.’

‘
And Sylvain?’

‘
Yes, I guessed it was him you wanted. When I brought him back here he got straight on his bike and rode home.’ Pierre caught sight of a stricken look on Adam’s face and his tone softened. ‘ I did explain to him that it was the rentrée and that that was why you hadn’t turned up. He does know. But I can’t tell you where he is now except to state the obvious: presumably at home. He didn’t think to leave a message for you with me and neither did I think to ask if he wanted to leave one.’

There was then a sudden silence as they both realised that the conversation had come to an end and that there was nothing further to say unless either of them decided to begin a new one.
Adam imagined for a crazy half-second that the next thing to happen would be for Pierre to dip his hands into Adam’s pockets, and for another crazy half-second he felt absurdly cheated that he didn’t. Then he came back to life. ‘ OK then, I’ll look for him at home.’ He turned rapidly on his heel, mounted his bike and fled away without so much as an
au revoir
or a backward glance. Just like the buzzard.

It was too late now to ride all the way to Perrogney.
That would have meant going all the way back to Courcelles and then going half as far again beyond it. Besides, having nerved himself to the encounter with Pierre, he wasn’t sure if he could face a cold call on Sylvain’s family quite so soon afterwards. Meekly he cycled home – where his disappointment was slightly tempered when he found the atmosphere lighter than usual, his mother picking vegetables in the garden, Gary, clad in shorts, cutting the grass rather inexpertly with the motor-mower and both of them laughing.

But the next day was Wednesday which meant there was no school in the afternoon.
Usually there was a choice of sports, besides club activities of all kinds, and then, most weeks, there was Adam’s cello lesson with M.Rocharnaud. As it happened, M. Rocharnaud was not expected this week though Adam’s parents were not aware of that. They would not question his staying in town till late afternoon while he in fact took advantage of his freedom to make his couldn’t-be-put-off-any-longer journey to Perrogney in search of his lover.

Without Adam’s noticing, the fields had changed colour during the last week.
The pale yellow of the cowslips had melted away and, just as Sylvain had predicted, everything had become a haze of shimmering blue. There were scabious and wild chicory, wild columbines, orchids here and gentians there, forget-me-nots and strange blue daisies, and in the thin grass on the heights the pasque-flower’s cobalt trumpet blossomed along the ground. Adam had decided to walk to Sylvain’s home. He was apprehensive enough about the visit as it was. He simply could not see himself turning up brazenly in the farmyard on a bicycle. It was with an effort of will that he turned off the public lane and onto the cart track that would take him the last half-mile. Then when he was just halfway down the track his heart sank to hear the sound of a vehicle clattering along behind him, apparently taking the flinty drive in top gear. He refused to turn round until the truck came to a stop beside him. Then he had to. It was the same pick-up in which Sylvain’s brother had given them both a lift to the bar at Perrogney. And the same driver. The tension and embarrassment of the moment melted away as Jean-Paul leaned out through his open window and said, ‘Adam,
non
? Looking for Sylvain? I’ll give you a lift.’

A bone-shaking thirty seconds later they came to a halt in the farmyard right in front of the main door of the house.
Adam was too surprised by the eventual suddenness of his arrival to know exactly how he felt, though nervousness was certainly a big part of the emotional mix. It was strange to think that you could have had sex with someone who was then a virtual stranger without more than token qualms yet that the walk up to their front door should be so much more alarming. But at that moment the house itself with its flat, no-nonsense frontage of grey stone and blank, black windows began, in spite of itself, to look oddly welcoming. The front door, which appeared to have been painted a colour previously unknown to art or science, so nondescript was it, stood open and Adam, suddenly emboldened, walked eagerly forward, shoulder to shoulder with Jean-Paul while the latter called his brother’s name,
‘Sylvain, c’est ton jeune copain, Adam.’

Adam’s triumphal entry into the house unfolded as if he were stepping into a dream.
He was at first in a whitewashed hallway where piles of egg-boxes jostled for room, and barely kept their balance, on a windowsill, and where the floor was banked up with old leather boots, paraffin heaters and cardboard crates. Then, following Jean-Paul who pushed open another door, he had just time to glimpse a living-room that looked, for the split-second that he had time to observe it, to be furnished entirely with newspapers and dogs, except in places where dark corners of chestnut furniture and shapeless areas of grubby upholstery appeared like the visible peaks of mostly submerged icebergs. But then a door in the opposite wall flew open, Sylvain bounded into the room and, all in the same moment as the dogs rose up and began to bark, was at Adam’s side, spinning him round with a hand on his shoulder, saying ‘
Salut
’ to his brother and to Adam, ‘
Allez, viens
, we’re going to feed the pigs.’ And Adam found himself propelled back out of the house and into the yard.

‘
But not just yet,’ Sylvain continued, practically frog-marching Adam across the yard. ‘Up to the top of the barn first.’ Adam let himself be led. Into a dark doorway then up an unfamiliar rickety stair and then into a place he recognised: the churchlike roof-space where they had once drunk damson brandy and Sylvain had changed his world with a kiss.

There was brandy under the floorboards still.
The level in the bottle seemed unchanged since last time. They had a couple of swigs each, while Adam noticed an agitation, a sense of urgency, about Sylvain that he hadn’t seen before. ‘ Sit down,’ he said, and as soon as Adam had obeyed, unlaced his trainers and roughly pulled them off. It was clear to Adam what was coming. Sylvain stripped him naked from the waist down before undoing his own belt. He was so excited, Adam noticed, that his cock already glistened with wet. Then he threw Adam face down on the broken straw-bales and, after the briefest of anointments with a moistened finger, entered him with three sharp thrusts.