When Love Comes to Town (5 page)

T
he following week was a blur of studying, eating, and sleeping. Time passed in a dreamlike fashion. But the dreaded day drew closer. Neil couldn’t get to sleep the night before his first exam, English. The more he tried to sleep, the more awake he felt. His head was running riot with a jumble of poems, characters, metaphors, similes, symbolism, imagery. Imagery? What does it mean? He realized that he didn’t really know the meaning of the word. How was he supposed to answer a question if he didn’t even know what the bloody question meant?

Neil sat up in his bed. Maybe he was going mad. It was four o’clock in the morning, a couple of hours to the start of the most important exam of his life, and crazy, jumbled conversations were going on inside his head. He shook his head and slapped his face sharply. One thing was sure: No one else doing the exams was still awake.

A prayer, he decided; it was time for a prayer. The last resort. He wiped his damp forehead and sighed. It was best to do a deal with Jesus or whoever.

Right, here’s the deal, Jesus,
he bargained.
You let me get to sleep and I promise that I won’t wank for a week. Okay? That’s fair enough, isn’t it? You know that’ll be a struggle for me, so come on, be fair
. Neil laid his head back down on his pillow and closed his eyes. No sound. Just the faint ticking of his clock and the rhythmic drone of his dad’s snores in the next room…

He was definitely feeling sleepy now, he would curl up fetal-style, pretend that he was a little kid again, and everything would be all right. In the morning his mum would make him a special breakfast, and she would probably kiss him before he left the house, and yes, he would kiss her back, and no, he wouldn’t be embarrassed, and yes, he would even tell her that he loved her. And she would smile and ruffle his hair like she used to do, and tell him that he was her special little boy, that there was no need for him to feel unhappy. And she would say that no matter what, she still loved him. And maybe he would go caddying for his dad like he used to do. Yes, and his dad would smile, drape his arm around his shoulder, and call him his little chatterbox. “Mister Happy, d’you know what you are? You’re my little chatterbox.” And of course he’d say it in such a way that he’d want Neil to continue chattering…Mister Happy. He’d forgotten that name. Mister Happy with the perpetual grin on his face.

Neil tensed. No, surely he hadn’t heard what he thought he had heard. He held his breath and listened. A few seconds passed. Then he heard it again, clear and distinct. Birdsong.
Tweet-tweet, chirp-chirp
. A lone voice, slightly husky, but it would rise to a crescendo in no time. Then he heard a dog bark. This was followed by the sound of a foghorn way out at sea, and the distant rumble of early morning traffic. He looked out the window and saw the row of singing birds perched on top of the tree house. Forget about getting any sleep now. He had to talk to someone.

He crept into Jackie’s bedroom. She was fast asleep, curled up on her side, with one hand hanging limply out over the edge of the bed and the other hidden somewhere beneath her duvet. Neil looked out her bedroom window. The first gray streaks of dawn light were falling upon the road outside. The sky was beginning to brighten out over the sea. He crossed the room and shook his sister gently.

“What time is it?” Jackie awoke with a start. When she lifted her head, her long strands of silky hair seemed almost reluctant to leave the pillow. She propped herself up on her elbow and rubbed her sleepy eyes with her knuckles. The multicolored collection of love bangles slipped down her arm, making a jangling sound.

“I can’t get to sleep,” Neil whispered, and the annoyance drained from her face when she remembered what day it was and how upset her younger brother was.

“I’m going to be too tired to do the exams.” Neil was close to tears.

Jackie sat up and calmly motioned him to sit down on the edge of her bed. She reached out, held both his shoulders, and stared into his eyes. “You’ll be fine, Neil,” she said quietly. “Loads of people stay up studying all night before exams and they get top marks.”

Neil forced a thin smile onto his face. He knew she was just trying to humor him.

“I’m telling you, Liam does it all the time. You see, it doesn’t matter how tired you think you are; the moment you step inside that exam hall your adrenaline will start pumping and you’ll feel as fresh as a daisy. Anyway, you’ll have no problem, you’ve got brains to burn.”

Neil looked away and blinked back his mounting tears. He felt so disoriented now, he was tempted to tell Jackie what he supposed she already suspected. But she could never suspect how lost and lonely he sometimes felt. Tonight, however, was hardly the time for major revelations. Instead he muttered good night, went back to his own bedroom and finally fell asleep.

Neil’s heart missed a beat the following morning when he walked down the corridor to the exam hall. Ian, the lounge boy, sporting a red baseball cap, faded blue jeans, and an extra-long checked shirt, was sitting outside the door along with a couple of other Fifth Years who were there as assistants to the exam proctor. Neil smiled to himself; he knew that their main duty was to accompany examinees to the toilets.

“How many jobs have you got?” Neil joked when Ian flashed him one of his boyish grins.

“Someone has to stop you all from cogging,” Ian replied, and Neil gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder.

Jackie was right, once he was handed the exam paper, any trace of tiredness disappeared instantly. The sight of Ian was guaranteed to awaken him from the deepest slumbers anyway. A quick perusal of the questions, and it became obvious that Father Donno’s predictions were uncannily accurate. Neil smiled to himself when he saw the question on the use of imagery and symbolism in
Wuthering Heights
. He realized that he knew the meaning of the word, all right; the problems would arise only if he had to explain it to somebody else. So much for wanting to be a teacher. But the essay question was where Neil excelled; the title he chose leaped off the page at him. Loneliness. Donno had warned them to be specific if they did this sort of essay and to try and write from their own experience. Neil grinned; whoever had set the paper must have being thinking of him. His pen couldn’t move fast enough as he scribbled down all his experiences over the past year. It was like therapy, and the presence of Ian outside the door certainly helped to focus his thoughts. He couldn’t wait to tell Becky. But then he realized that she was more than likely doing the same essay herself about her adventures with Brian, the married man. The correctors were going to have some fun reading their scripts. But halfway through, Neil got a panic attack. What if the exam corrector was a bigot? What if they decided to trace it back to the school and then to the student and told Donno that he had a queer in his midst? Donno would probably try and hop him if he knew. Neil sniggered aloud at the thought, bringing a puzzled look from Mick Toner, who was chewing his pen and staring into space at the desk alongside his.

Neil put his hand up and attracted the proctor’s attention. It was bathroom time. His own reward for doing what he considered a decent essay. Much to Neil’s relief, Ian was up out of his seat in a flash once he saw who it was who was leaving the hall.

“How’s the exam going?” Ian asked shyly while they strolled down the wooden corridor together.

“Ah, not too bad.” Neil tried to sound casual.

“I heard the choice of essays is pretty crap.”

“Bet you’ve been talking to Mick Toner,” Neil said, laughing as he sneaked a look at the sky-blue eyes.

“Yeah,” Ian smiled, “he was really pissed off.”

Neil wondered what Ian’s reaction would be if he told him that he had been the inspiration behind his essay.
Hey gorgeous, I’m dedicating my work of art to you, what d’you think of that? And another thing, I’ve written poems about you, what d’you think of that?
But Ian wasn’t thinking of anything, he was holding the bathroom door open for Neil with his left hand.

“See you,” Neil said, heading straight for one of the stalls, deciding that he couldn’t really go to the urinals when he didn’t even want to go to the toilet. He stood inside the dark, pungent-smelling cubicle, thinking of the expression that would have formed on Ian’s face if he had asked him in for a quickie.
He seems so innocent
, Neil thought,
he probably wouldn’t even know what a quickie was
. After about thirty seconds, Neil flushed the toilet and left the stall.

“Ah, nothing like a quickie,” he quipped, washing his hands. Ian smiled. And Neil wanted to whisper
I love you
like Yvonne Lawlor had whispered into his ear a couple of weeks before at Hollywood Nights. It had been an awkward moment, which, true to form, Neil had gotten out of by making a joke. “Love is subjective,” he had said with a laugh. It was cruel, he knew, but Yvonne would recover, and anyway, people like her had it easy; she could go around declaring her love openly without having to move to another country. After that incident he made himself scarce at Hollies, insisting that the place was only for kids, that Yvonne Lawlor was a bitch, that he was sick of meeting the likes of Mal and Tony, and that the music they played there was woeful. Then Neil had what he considered to be a flash of inspiration.

“D’you ever go to Hollies?”

Ian looked puzzled. Of course he was puzzled, Neil thought, what was this Sixth Year bloke doing asking him a question like that? In the middle of his final exams, for God’s sake!

“Sometimes,” Ian said with a shrug of his slender shoulders.

“Great place, isn’t it?” Neil added, drying his hands.

Ian nodded nonchalantly, and Neil felt his heart surge. It was obvious that Ian hated Hollies, more than likely because there were women there. He was definitely gay.

Then Neil sighed inwardly. How pathetic could you get? Just leave the poor kid be. How would you like it if he was your little brother, and someone was chasing him like this?

But he knew it didn’t matter how pathetic he was being; he wanted to know everything about Ian.

“I better get back and finish my masterpiece,” Neil said, leaving the bathroom with Ian tagging along behind him, and he smiled as they parted company.

At lunchtime, Neil opened the front door and heard the blazing argument between his mum and Jackie in the kitchen. His mum had discovered that Jackie was going to Amsterdam to work in the Heineken factory for the summer with Liam and not with her pal Michelle as she had said. He stood in the hallway listening.

“I’m just getting sick and tired of all your lies,” his mum said in a weary voice.

“It wasn’t a lie. Michelle was going to come with me,” Jackie insisted.

“Lookit, Michelle’s mother told me that Michelle never had any intentions of ever going to Amsterdam. She wouldn’t allow her.” His mum sighed. “It’s just getting to the stage now, Jackie, where I’m not able to believe a word you say.”

“Yeah, well, maybe there’s a reason for that.” Jackie sounded sulky, and Neil knew what was coming next.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m twenty years old. It’s time you and Dad stopped treating me like a kid.”

“We’ll treat you like an adult when you start behaving like an adult.”

Neil heard Jackie clicking her tongue and sighing noisily, and he knew that she was rolling her eyes upward, a gesture guaranteed to anger his mum.

“I wish you’d have a little manners when you’re speaking to your mother.”

“What?” came Jackie’s reply of feigned indignation, her bangles rattling as she pushed her hair back from her face, a sure sign that she knew she was in the wrong.

“You know full well what I’m talking about,” his mum replied angrily, but this was only a signal for her daughter to go on the offensive.

“Why aren’t you honest? Just admit that you don’t like Liam.”

“This has nothing to do with Liam.”

“Oh yes it has.”

“It’s your own problem if you decide to hang around with someone who smokes drugs,” his mum replied. She still hadn’t gotten over the shock of Jackie using the fact that Liam smoked pot as a clinching argument during heated dinner-table discussions. Liam always got first class honors in his exams, and this was Jackie’s conclusive proof that her parents were wrong again; smoking pot didn’t have an adverse effect on the brain.

“Jesus!” Jackie muttered, laughing scornfully.

“Don’t be taking the holy name in vain please,” his mum snapped. “Not while you’re living in this house.”

“Everyone in college smokes pot.” As usual, Jackie was resorting to her calculated hyperbole.

“You’d be far better off going into a church and saying a few prayers, missy.”

Neil heard the clanking sounds of pots being dumped into the sink. Martyr overload time. Jackie had launched into her reasons for not going to Mass. Patriarchy, power-broking bishops having flings, brainwashing, women being churched after childbirth because they were considered dirty, the sudden convenient disappearance of Limbo, the celibacy lark, the Billings method…She recited her well-worn list.

Neil smiled and shook his head. He could never understand why Jackie made such a fuss about religion. He had given up going to Mass himself a couple of months before when the pope encouraged active job discrimination against gay people in certain situations. It was the only way he could protest against the insensitive statement. But he didn’t see the sense in making a big scene about it at home; it was his decision, not his parents’. At the time, he had been one of the few blokes left in his class who still went to Mass. But then, he had his reasons for being a holy Joe. He remembered the priest telling the congregation that Christ died to restore life, while he was praying that people would move ever so slightly so that he could get a better view of Ian. And when the choir sang, their celestial voices were rejoicing his beauty. That heavenly hair, that sweet neck, that angelic dreamy stance. Beauty that poetry was invented for.

Of course, Jackie had raised the topic of the pope’s statement every day at dinner for weeks, using it as yet another stick to beat their parents’—particularly their mother’s—staunch beliefs. Neil wished he had the nerve to contribute to the discussion, but he was too embarrassed, too self-conscious, and imagined that his parents would start suspecting he was gay if he did. It was ridiculous, he knew, but at the back of his mind there was another fear—the fear that if he started to speak on the subject, the floodgates might burst open, causing the volcano inside him to explode, ripping the cozy little family apart at the seams.