Junction X (28 page)

We stepped out of the lift—together. We had become complacent and stupid, and anyway it was the last time until Christmas.

Phil was standing in the underpass.

Alex was fast, adaptable, even though we both knew it was useless and I saw the look in his eyes as he turned towards me, panicked. I probably looked no better.

He turned and shook my hand. “Thanks again, Mr. Johnson, I’ll tell Dad what you said about the flat, but I don’t think my aunt would like the lift much.” With a strained smile for me and a nod to Phil, he ran off.

Phil just stood there; neither of us was smiling. I turned and pulled the lift doors open and waited for him to get in.

In the flat, I closed the door and leaned back against it. I was suddenly exhausted, but deep inside I boiled with anger at Phil: for spying on me, for setting this whole thing up, for not being trustworthy, for not being the friend I thought he was. For spoiling everything. All the tension and fear balled themselves together and came out in bitter accusation.

“How dare you!”

“You are joking. How dare
I?
”

“What? This isn’t anything to do with you! Why are you here? Lurking around outside like some kind of dirty old man…”

“Oh,
that’s
rich.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t act coy, Eddie. I think we know who the dirty old man is here.”

I took a step towards him. I wanted to smash his face in. “Just shut up.”

“And what? You’ll explain? How can you explain? How long…” He ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. I called you a cliché, too. A bit of skirt, I thought. And all the while you were…” He looked at me like he was looking at a stranger.

“I don’t need to explain it to you.”

“Were you planning to explain it to the police?”

“You bastard. You wouldn’t dare.”

He looked shocked then. “Of course I wouldn’t. But someone would. Bloody hell, Eddie, what did you think? Did you think no one would ever find out?”

He had backed down, and he was trying to be reasonable, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook. My anger burned deeply. He’d cheated me of watching Alex walk away.

“You’ve got no right, Phil. No right. Christ! What sort of friend are you? What kind of bloke spies on his friends? I should never have taken this place!”

His voice had a leering, mocking quality to it, and I knew I’d been right; he hadn’t wanted to help. “But, oh so handy, though, I’d say. And there was me thinking that your lady friend would be swanning in from London, instead of…what?”

“Shut up, Phil.”

“How convenient. Right next door.”

“I told you to shut up.”

“So bloody cosy. And I never saw it.” He went quiet and I could see his mind working. “Shit. You’ve been at it since before Christmas. Bonfire Night. That boy was lit up—I remember wondering if he was in love because he never stopped smiling.”

“Don’t. Don’t bloody talk about him. You’ve got no right to be here! What are you getting from this? Some sick pleasure?”

“Just stop. Stop yelling at me and sit down. You stupid bastard. Have you any idea of what you are doing?”

“Yes! Do you think I don’t?” I had tears in my eyes, tears of utter fury, and I couldn’t stop shouting at him. “It’s you that doesn’t understand!”

“Oh, I think I have a pretty good idea, Eddie. And you are calling
me
sick? You’re fucking a child.”

“Oh don’t be ridiculous. He’s eighteen.”

“Legally, he’s a
child
, Eddie! How did you think it was going to go? How do you think his father is going to react? How would
you
react, if it was John?”

He took the wind out of my sails with that. “Don’t be stupid. He’s an adult. You’ve seen him.”

“I’ve seen him playing in the snow. I’ve seen him playing sparklers with your kids. He’s just left school, you told me. He’s a bloody child, Eddie, and they are going to crucify you for it.”

“But…” I waved my arms incoherently at him.

“Us?”

I nodded numbly.

“Consenting adults. Breaking the law, of course. But no one’s involved except us. But you fuck a child, Eddie, and there’s no coming back from that.”

“Oh, get out. Get out! You have no idea. None.”

He looked around the room and gave an exaggerated sniff. “Don’t I? I’m surprised the Railways Board hasn’t already twigged. A grown man, coming in and followed shortly by his—”

“No more. You’ve said your piece. Now get out.” I grabbed his arm and shoved him towards the door. “Get the fuck out before I do something I regret.”

He resisted me and forced me to a standstill. “I’m trying to bloody
help,
you idiot. Christ…why? Just tell me
why
. Wasn’t it enough for you?”

“Is this what it’s about? Are you bloody jealous?” His eyes flinched and I wondered if I’d hit him where it hurt. “I love him, of course.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Well, what did you think? You’d think that I’d…that I’m some kind of man who would do that?”

“That’s what
everyone
will think. Love isn’t going to come into it. That doesn’t exist for us.”

I was getting angry again, “I knew you didn’t understand.”

He seemed to punch each word. “As far as they are concerned, Eddie, it’s not love. It’s perversion. That’s all they’ll see. Married man with his paws all over a boy.”

“It wasn’t like that. He started it.”

“Yeah, right. Tell that to the court, Eddie. And good luck with it. Oh don’t worry, I’m going, and you needn’t fret that I’ll say anything. I won’t. You’ll hang yourself soon enough. I thought I knew you, Eddie. I thought I
knew
you.” He gave me a look and left.

 
I recognised the look; it was disgust.

+ + +

It took me a while before I stopped shaking. When I got home, there were questions, more questions. “I had a row with Phil,” I said, summing it all up in one idiotic sentence, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

I went to bed as early as I could, but Phil’s words wouldn’t leave me. I lay awake while my ulcer played havoc with my insides, and my mind churned with almost the same ferocity. I wasn’t so short-sighted not to have realised the danger I was in, and Alex too, thanks to me. But Phil’s words had shaken me. Alex’s height and maturity had made it easy to forget (or to push aside) the fact that he wasn’t an adult and wouldn’t be for two more years. We could both lose everything. I’d known it, but I’d kept the fear suffocated, pushed down deep.

That night, as I lay and looked at the ceiling, I pushed my life ahead, one move at a time like a chess game, and I ended up with checkmate every single time. The only good choice for us both was an impossible dream—taking Alex and running far, far away. He’d talked of living in some country—never England—high up in some tree-lined hills where we could love and be ourselves.

I closed my eyes. I could almost see a hillside with a dirt track disappearing into the trees—like something from Durrell’s books. Perhaps it was Corfu. I saw myself driving in a battered yellow car. Deep into some pine woods and then up a dusty track. At the top of a stone-filled slope was a rickety gate with a young man sitting on top of it, a young man with blond hair, ragged trousers and bare feet.

He’s a kid, Eddie. Phil’s voice resounded in my head like the chimes of the downstairs clock.

Phil was a bastard—I saw that now—but he was right. Running could never be an option. Even taking into account what I was running from, taking an underage boy out of the country without his parents’ consent was kidnapping, a crime as serious as child molesting. We’d not be safe, even in those dusty Greek hills.

The day after that, Alex left. I find it hard to describe the day at all. I left for work and as usual I glanced up at his window. He was there, staring down at me. I don’t know what I expected, but not the look he gave me.

We only connected for a couple of seconds. I gave a false cheery wave to him in exactly the same style I’d give to my children waving from upstairs, but his eyes burned into mine and his one palm against the glass felt as though it was warm and safe in my hand.

I spent the day at work sick at heart, my phone idle in my hand more often than not. I skipped lunch and tried to smile when my colleagues accused me of working through to catch up. It was stupid, I reminded myself constantly. There was nothing I could do. Nothing. But I wished to God he’d managed to convince his parents to take him over the weekend, so I could be there at the gate, waving him off as I was sure my family was doing.

The thought of walking back up The Avenue past his house and knowing that he was gone until Christmas pulled at me all day; what had I done before? I couldn’t remember what it had been like not to anticipate turning the corner and seeing his house in the distance. Before he had kissed me, I had hoped for the chance of a glimpse of him, but afterwards, I longed for it. It was a reward he gave me (when he could) for a day’s toil in London. It sliced time for me, the time we had to stay apart, divided it into manageable segments. It will be
this
long before I see him again.
This
amount of time. Measured and precious.

I played our last moments over and over. The feeling of his hand in mine. The fear in his face when he recognised Phil. Phil ruining the only chance we had for a last goodbye. All I felt when I remembered Alex and I together was the sick feeling I’d experienced when Phil appeared in the underpass. All I could remember clearly was the fear.

And now, with Phil’s words ringing in my ears—and he was right, damn him—I knew that Alex was gone, not just for the term, but gone forever. The very thought of it made me sick to my stomach, but I forced myself at long last to look into that bleak future that Phil had painted.

I told myself that Alex would be fine. He was adaptable, wasn’t he? I hadn’t liked university much, but then I hadn’t been the kind of young man who would kiss another man “just because” he thought he wanted him to. I had watched, avidly and from the sidelines, young men like Alexander. Young men who lit up the quad, the drama society, the debating society. Alex would find his feet, my clever boy. He would come down at Christmas, full of gossip and scandals, and he’d have so many new friends that he’d find his old life colourless and somehow restrictive. I might not have been much at university, but I could remember the first few vacs. My home life had shrunk somewhat; suddenly my parents couldn’t match up with the parents of my friends, and their views were no longer mine.

I knew, I just
knew
that Alex would be the same. He’d outgrow The Avenue and its middle-class aspirations as surely as I had outgrown Grover Terrace and its allotments and alleyways. And if I broke his heart—just a little—now, then he’d bounce back. One day he’d be ashamed of his older-man stockbroker lover—or perhaps he’d find what we’d had something to boast about, but not something to return to. Perhaps one day when he had an actor or an author to love. Some young man who would be able to let Alex fly.

I got through that day, and the week. And somehow, the weeks after that churned by one day at a time. Life with Valerie had reached some kind of
entente
cordiale
, a formal alliance full of brittle politeness and over-careful manoeuvres. In spite of my assurances to her, from time to time we’d explode at each other—dried tinder-kegs sparked off with a terse comment—and the same recriminations and accusations would fly. Was I having an affair? “Tell me, Ed—I’d rather know.”

No, she wouldn’t.

Painted into a corner, I chose the coward’s path. I stuck to what I had, what I knew. What choice did I have? Each day, on the train, between calls, day after day, I rehearsed what to say to Alex. I was no actor and there was so much in that speech that was false, and so much that was bitter, undeniable truth. “We have no future.” “What do you want? I can’t leave my family.” “We should never have started this.” Implying that
he
should never have started it. I had a dozen speeches, and they were all lies.

He came down mid-December. It’s hard to believe it’s not even February yet. I felt like I was holding my breath on the day he came home, and the speeches I had saved up seemed nonsense. We weren’t in danger; of course we weren’t. There was no reason for anyone to find out. A hundred excuses, a hundred rebuttals.

His timing couldn’t have been worse, or better. Val had taken the children out before he called. I’d opened the door when I was on the phone in the hall, during two minutes when I hadn’t been expecting him, hadn’t been thinking of him. His grin was a mile wide and he slid into the hall with a whispered “Hello,” then stood there, leaning against the hall with his lopsided smile—the one that made my heart flip. I hardly remember the rest of the phone conversation; Alex looked so different I could hardly bear to look at him. That bubbling joy he’d often showed when we made love seemed to be pouring out of him. I think I loved him more in that small moment, in those precious seconds before I crushed his heart under my feet, than I had ever loved him before.