Ollie Always (7 page)

Skint now seemed fascinated by the parade of blossom passing them by from the vineyards and fruiters that lined both sides of the road. It wasn’t so much that it was blossom, but that it was there in October. Six weeks wasn’t nearly long enough to overcome the brain’s natural tendency to think in seasons. Say October; envisage golden leaves, harvest festivals, conkers, and chestnuts. Christmas in the summer—it defied belief. And it was much hotter here in Central than it had been down on the coast in Dunedin. The tarmac gave off an evocative smell beneath the tyres, the scent of the flowers disturbingly invigorating. Again, Ollie felt that sense of hollowness in his core, the need for something he couldn’t identify—clearly not sugar or alcohol, as he was pretty much topped up with both of those.

“Janice would love this.”

Ollie felt fairly sure that Skint’s wife wouldn’t love him, for many reasons, so he didn’t reply. Instead, because he felt so empty, he murmured, “Has she arrested anyone recently?”

Skint laughed. “She’s just made half colonel, so she’s not hands on anymore. Policy mostly.”

“Colonel?”

“Yup. Colonel Jan. She’s working in London now. Hates it.”

Ollie had little familiarity with work, so he couldn’t comment on this, but it struck him as odd that someone who hated something didn’t just give it up. After all, working in London unhappy, or…living with Skint, very, very happy. It seemed an easy choice to him. So easy, he decided he would ask, despite his plan not to speak. “Why doesn’t she pack it in and come and join you then?”

Skint was staring out over the vast dam they’d just passed, his face turned away. Ollie thought he wasn’t going to reply, but then heard, “It’s complicated.”

Uh-huh. In Ollie’s experience—and although he was only twenty-five, he had enjoyed a strange and colourful life so far—situations that were described as complicated, in fact, weren’t. At all. Solutions invisible to the subject in question were incredibly obvious to everyone else.

Still, none of it was his business. He hadn’t wanted to drive with this man to Queenstown. He hadn’t volunteered to escort him around the previous day nor spend the afternoon on the beach with him. He hadn’t written a word of his novel since he’d met Skint—and wasn’t blame so much more fun than procrastination? Except for the cats, of course.

Ollie took a corner too fast and to fill the void, asked, “How long are your friends here for?”

“Couple of weeks more they said, jammy buggers. Sicknote lies about everything though.”

“Sicknote?”

Skint made a small noise of incomprehension and Ollie, eyes off the road for a moment, repeated, “Sicknote? You have a friend called Sicknote?”

“Oh, yeah, he coasted through training on one.”

Ollie was stumped for another topic of conversation.

They passed through Cromwell and glimpses of the mountains seemed to keep Skint happily engaged. Mountains and road, and then they were at Ollie’s turnoff. He had to drop Skint here. It was the middle of nowhere. Skint had been confident the whole way that he could either walk or hop on a bus. Ollie had known both these for the fallacies they were, but for some reason, he hadn’t pointed this out. He discovered the reason when he found himself commenting, “I have to go into Queenstown tomorrow to shop. Stay with me tonight, and you can come in with me then.”

Skint hesitated.

Ollie wanted to shout,
“Not stay with me. We’ve got eight fucking bedrooms!”
then realised what he should be protesting was,
“I’m not gay! I’m not Oliver Fitzroy. I’m not trying to seduce you,”
but it occurred to him that all three of these statements might well be lies. Even he found it hard to tell anymore.

Skint suddenly grinned and nodded. “Okay. You’re a pal.”

Yeah. Great.
He’d always wanted to be one of those.

§§§

Ollie wasn’t embarrassed by his mother’s wealth, although the fact that he always thought of it as hers, thus trying to distance himself from the very thing he relied on, told him that he wasn’t quite as sanguine as he pretended to be. He’d never known anything else. He’d lived the privileged life of the very wealthy since before he could remember, although in certain moods and with enough alcohol inside, he could debate the definition of privilege with the best of them. Sometimes, he saw this concept on a continuum with happiness. Opposite ends of the spectrum and facing each other off uneasily.

As they wound around the long track to the station farmstead, he wondered what Skint was thinking about it all—the endless vista of yellowing grass interspersed with rock formations, the towering snow-capped mountains in the distance, the glimpses of willow-lined valleys with glints of gold-flecked glacial streams.

The house sat high on a ridge of schist rock protected from the wind by the rising mountain behind it and strategically placed to enjoy a view that was so breathtaking it was almost intimidating. Here, the true extent of the mountains could be seen, making anyone who had driven the route from the coast realise that up until then they’d been seeing life through a glass very darkly. Here, the peaks stretched to infinity, one soaring pink or turquoise tip leading to another; that one saffron, that gold, the snow filtering the colours of the setting sun as if an insane artist had decided white was insufficient to show off his skills at painting the dying winter’s landscape.

This was a hill station, so very little garden had been cultivated, mostly azaleas, which in late October were at the peak of their fragile beauty, and this time of the evening were releasing their subtle scent across the cold-browned lawn that graced the front of the single-storey house.

They couldn’t have arrived at a more beautiful place on earth or at a better time to fully appreciate that otherworldly perfection. If you died, you’d be pretty impressed if heaven looked like this.

It only got better on the inside. Ronnie Fitzroy liked the charm of an old New Zealand homestead, but she’d been raised in shabby aristocratic frugality her whole childhood, and she wasn’t having it now. Left original on the outside, the interior of this station-owner’s house had been totally renovated the year after she’d bought it. Anyone with enough money in New Zealand lived a very good life indeed.

Ollie had been coming here during the long school holidays since he’d started at his prep school, so if he’d wanted to, he could have thought of it as home. Nowhere was home, so he didn’t. But he dutifully showed Skint around, ending with allocating him a bedroom for the night. The man seemed completely bemused. Ollie supposed it was a bit of a contrast from sleeping on a mat on the floor.

He’d known there would be no food in the house, so he’d bought a few things when they’d stopped in Alexandra. Wine mostly. And chocolate. Skint had added some salmon and broccoli and sweet potatoes, which, Ollie had noted,
he’d
had to pay for. He had no intention of putting anything pink in his mouth, a rule he’d broken once or twice in the past, much to his chagrin, and therefore wasn’t about to offer to cook it either. He took his family-sized bag of Maltesers and his bottle of wine to the deck and relaxed for the first time that day.

He’d only just gotten the first taste of honeycomb and chocolate under his tongue when his bag was whisked away, and Skint declared, “Dinner in twenty minutes. You’ll ruin your appetite.”

“Are you my mother?”

Skint had already disappeared inside. Really annoyed, Ollie was about to follow and retrieve his preferred meal when the other man reappeared with another glass and poured them both some wine. He watched Ollie take his then sat down alongside him and commented, “If you were mine, I’d look after you a bit better.”

Ollie’s wine went down the wrong way, and while he coughed, he heard Skint add quickly, “My
son
. You said mother. I meant son.”

Ollie’s eyes were watering. From the choking. He thought it best not to reply. Skint seemed to think it was a good idea to change the subject too, and he asked, “Why aren’t you living here? Why the cottage?”

“Crib. It’s…complicated.” The irony of this reply did not escape Ollie. Not wanting to dwell on the very many reasons why he preferred staying in a place that none of his mother’s male friends were likely to try and stay with him, he asked suddenly, “Do you and Janice have children?”

Skint pouted. It was a distractingly adorable look on a grown man with stubble. “No.” He let his gaze travel over the mountains, apparently watching the shadows descend from the peaks, and then said, as if he were merely commenting on the view, “Janice is gay.”

Once more, Ollie began to choke. His throat was tender from the last time, so this bad swallow took longer to recover from. In some ways, it was convenient. What the hell did you say to that?

A questioning glance seemed the best thing to do, so Ollie took off his sunglasses and gave the other man one of his best. Skint smiled as if he appreciated the effort and shrugged. “It was how she knew about my friend. She saw him at a party she’d been persuaded to go to with her girlfriend.”

“Wait. Back up a little. Your wife is gay, and you knew this before you married her. She knew it? She had a girlfriend?”

“Oh, sure. But she was about to get promoted to Major. You’re allowed to be gay, but you’re not going to be the first gay, female brigadier of the RMP. So we kinda agreed to get married.”

Oh, boy.

Ollie genuinely couldn’t tell whether this was very good news or not. There seemed to be one very obvious question, so he asked it. “What did you get out of this?”

“A house.”

“What?”

Skint shrugged. “I’d never lived in a house before. We got a married quarter—a colonel’s one because she was RMP and couldn’t be housed with her contemporaries. It had four bedrooms and a huge garden and—”

“You married for a house? They gave you a house?”

“Yes. I’d been living in a room with eight men. Which was an improvement on what I’d been living in before the army.”

Ollie put his shades back on. Stealth was required.

“She got her promotion?”

“Yes.”

Skint had been right; complicated hardly covered it at all.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ollie picked at the food when Skint brought it out, mainly for something to do.

“Eat.”

Ollie glanced over. “She’s not coming over here, is she?”

Skint leant back with a sigh. “No. But she’s still entitled to the quarter as long as we stay married.”

“What about you though? You did it for the house.” He saw a sudden and vivid high colour chase across Skint’s face. After a pause, thinking about a sticker over a house for sale sign, he said, “She bought you off.”

Skint curled his lip, a bitter expression. “It wasn’t like that.”

Ollie was pretty sure it was exactly like that.

He suddenly felt very tired, which was odd, as he realised he’d only had half a glass of wine and his plate of disgusting pink and green stuff was empty. Who knew being so healthy was so exhausting? Besides, it was getting distinctly chilly sitting out on the deck, as the sun had left the mountain in deep shadow. The house glowed warm and inviting behind him. He closed his eyes for a moment to a vision of what could happen next if Skint were a different man—or, perhaps just as importantly, if
he
were not who he was condemned to be—and said wearily, “I’ve put some towels out for you. You have your own bathroom. I’d hate for you to bump into me in the middle of the night and find the moment a little complicated.”

Skint suddenly pitched forward. “What do you want, Ollie? You flick like a fucking switch. What have I said to upset you now? What’s going on in that brilliant brain of yours, because I can’t work you out!”

Ollie’s brows rose.

“You were the one who engineered our meeting. You were the one who wanted to be friends. Then…” Skint clicked his fingers. “You switch me off. I’m not a situation in England you can pretend doesn’t exist because you’re eleven thousand miles away. I’m right here. Flesh and blood.” He illustrated this by seizing Ollie’s arm hard, a hot touch of palm and fingertips on his cool skin. “You can’t run from this, can you?”

Ollie looked down and pursed his lips, thinking. “The last man who did that wanted to put his cock inside me while I read a comic book. I was twenty-three, so it seemed a bit passé to me.” As he’d predicted, Skint snatched back his hand as if bitten. “Of course, he’d confused me with Oliver.”

Skint put his face in his hands, rubbing the stubble vigorously. “Jesus Christ. You said you weren’t gay.”

“I’m not.” He was feeling generous, so he added, “I can be anything I want.” He chuckled. “I’m a character in a book, after all.”

Skint lowered his hands enough to peer at Ollie over his fingertips. “You are seriously fucked up. You know that, right?”

Ollie laughed, a short bark of disbelief. “Believe it or not, that’s what I’m trying not to be.”

Skint suddenly rocked back in his seat. His gaze became searing. Ollie frowned, not liking the sudden intensity. “What?”

“I think that’s the first truthful thing you’ve actually said to me.”

“Whoops. I must be slipping.”

Skint glanced around the darkness for a moment. “What a bloody fool I was to think I could do this.” Whether he was referring to Ollie or himself wasn’t clear. He suddenly pushed his chair away from the table. “Look, it’s late, so I would be very grateful for the hospitality if it’s still okay for me to stay. But I’ll get a taxi down to the town in the morning before you get up. I’m sorry, Ollie. I’m really sorry about all of this.”

He walked in through the patio doors and, as good as his word, he was gone in the morning.

CHAPTER NINE

Ollie had enjoyed a number of Mick Dundee moments since coming to New Zealand—that almost impossible, antipodean coincidence of meeting the same person over and over again. New Zealand was a very small country with fewer people in it than a good-sized town in England, and it was inevitable that you bumped into someone you knew wherever you went.

So it wasn’t a complete surprise that he walked into Skint the following morning when he was about to stop for a much-needed cup of tea in a café by the lake in Queenstown. Literally walked into him. He’d been looking down at his list of things to do; Skint had been glancing back over his shoulder at the view. They collided.