To Mend a Broken Wing, page 20
“I went downstairs to give Lucien my rent money for the week, and to tell Jay I wouldn’t be at cricket training. And then I needed to let Lizzie know I wouldn’t be available from tomorrow night, and then I…”
I switched off, to be honest, not even feeling or caring that his tongue and teeth were nibbling their way from one nipple to the other or that his fingers were snaking down to my groin. I’d lost interest. I’d be okay, I guessed. I mean, if he wanted to still see me, we could arrange to meet up. If he’d decided to find a room to rent in Allenmouth, then that might work for a while. But he said travel plans. No one made travel plans to go to Allenmouth. You just hopped on a bus and went. Bristol was a bit farther and had more rental options. More job and college options too. I had access to a car, so we could meet up when he was settled maybe, although not for an overnight stay. So that would be a couple of buses. Obviously, him going back up north would signal the end of things, but it could be worse, I supposed. At least Noah had proved that some guys didn’t mind my…
“Are you even listening? Lucien said four or five days would be fine. He said you never take your holiday leave allowance anyhow. They’ll juggle work around with the kids, and Jay’s sister said…”
“Sorry, no, I missed that bit.”
“And then I phoned the vicar.”
“What the fuck?”
He pinched me hard on the fleshy part of my thigh. “You weren’t listening, were you? I’m going to France. I heard what you said, even though it made me angry at the time, and I’ve given it some thought. I’ve decided I need to spend some time with Guillaume away from everybody else.”
Oh, thank God. He wasn’t leaving. A heavy sigh of relief whooshed out of me. Nipple sucking was back on.
“What’s that got to do with my mum? Have you suddenly got religion? They’re on the hunt for a new bell ringer since Alison-the-accountant moved back to London. Is she trying to persuade you to do that?”
“No. Just listen for a second. I’m going to France for a few days, and you’re coming with me. I’m going to try to work things through with Guillaume. Like you told me to. It’s all booked—flights to La Rochelle, time off work, everything.”
I was going with him?
Now my mind raced for a whole slew of different reasons. I never thought of myself as disabled, handicapped, or differently abled, or whatever the correct term was these days. My own disability was relatively minor in comparison to many. Aside from struggling to find a sexual partner happy to overlook my ugly stump, which had proven slightly tricky among the feckless gay youth at college, most of the time, I totally forgot it singled me out as different at all.
That is, until I entered an airport. I hoped Hell had reserved a special corner exclusively for the people who designed them. And I was one of the lucky ones. It wasn’t as if I needed a wheelchair or learning aids or daily living assistants. I had two strong legs, good eyesight, and perfect hearing.
I ran through my mental airport torture checklist. I’d need luggage, but dragging along a suitcase was a big fat no. I’d nip home and dig out my old student rucksack. I’d pick up my passport from my parents’ house, too, find a paperclip, and pin it open at the photo section, ready, so I didn’t get flustered flipping through the sticky little pages one-handed while everyone tutted behind me in the queue. And I’d wear my ugly old parka with all the pockets so I could easily swap between producing my passport and showing my ticket. I say ‘easily’. Someone at the check-in counter once remarked I was ‘all fingers and thumbs’, a joke which unsurprisingly landed like tumbleweed.
Would I have room for a second pair of shoes? I hated slip-on loafers—maybe it was the name that put me off, but to my mind, they were only one step from slippers designed for elderly people, or kids who hadn’t yet mastered tying laces. And the last time I’d fumbled with that stupid, slippery, clanking seat buckle, the air steward had leaned across and snapped the ends together for me, without even asking, as if I was a fucking toddler.
“I wanted to ask your mum a few things first.” Noah’s voice butted into my thoughts. “She said you’d be anxious. You look anxious.”
“What? I’m not anxious.” So fucking anxious.
“About the travelling and the airport. Especially the airport.”
I swore my mum could actually see inside people’s heads sometimes.
Noah’s lips landed on my cheek with an audible mwah. “You don’t need to be anxious, you know. About anything at all. Because you’ll be with me.”
*
ONE OF THE upsides of having a half-French boyfriend was going to be the trips to visit his French father, because his hometown was very pretty. Plus, there was the kissing. An obligation that my half-French boyfriend took extremely seriously. He even kissed me on the plane! In front of, like, people!
He made the whole journey a doddle, to be honest. I don’t know why I’d fussed so badly in the hours leading up to it. Basically, Noah ensured my only responsibility was to not lose my passport or phone. At the security scanner, an impatiently sighing guy in the queue behind us benefited from the full glare of Noah’s fight-or-fuck expression, while I fumbled to remove my coat. Believe me, the fucking option of that menu most definitely wasn’t on offer. And when he asked my permission before crouching to quickly tie my trainers on the other side of the X-ray machine, and then cupped my face in his hands and delivered a fat wet smacker on my lips before telling me again that he bloody loved me, well, I could have fucking died of happiness.
Anyhow, Marcel had treated us to a taxi, which dropped us off at the edge of a pedestrianised area near Saint-Martin port, slap bang next to an impressive stone edifice dominating the entrance to the old touristy part of town. The thing looked hundreds of years old; back in the day, it must have been some kind of defensive fortress. This afternoon, however, it served a stark reminder as to why we were here in the first place.
“That’s the prison,” said Noah needlessly.
Few holidaymakers guessed what lay behind the elaborately carved frontispiece of the citadel, nor at the end of the elegant esplanade. A harsh metal lookout post peeked from the top of one of the original battlements, easily mistaken for a weather monitoring device or some sort of telecommunications apparatus.
The weather had taken a turn for the better over the previous few days, bringing the early-season tourists out of hibernation. I counted around twenty or thirty of them dotted around the grassy park area surrounding the prison. Beyond, on the long sandy beach, dog walkers and joggers went about their day, making the most of the spring sunshine, which cast bright rays on the prison walls, transforming the cold grey stone to a honeycomb golden yellow. Grandparents looked on benignly as toddlers wore themselves out; young couples held hands and smiled at one another. The newly wed and the nearly dead was how my mum would have described the scene, folk escaping to the sun before the school holidays arrived. A toddler’s squeal from the colourful play area cut through the sounds of light chatter as an ice-cream fell from her sticky grasp onto the ground. Her young dad hushed his offspring in a rapid burst of French, and I smiled inwardly, wondering how Lucien and Orlando were faring on their own all day.
“It’s an amazing building.” I gazed up at the sweeping expanse of ornate brickwork. A simple modern sign with the wording Ministère de la Justice graced a vast arched entranceway, otherwise, I suspect the building looked exactly as it had done when it had been built three centuries ago.
“Probably not so swish on the inside,” Noah remarked.
We both took a moment to study it before he spoke again.
“Could you imagine walking through that door, right now, and knowing you’re not coming out again for at least another fifteen years?”
“God, no.”
It was a sombre thought. “And all the time you were inside, you’d know that all this waited on the outside”—he gestured across the park— “and that the sea and the beach lay just a few feet away, but you weren’t going to be allowed anywhere near it? Christ, I bet the inmates can see it from a lot of the windows.” He took a deep breath in through his nose. “And can certainly smell it.”
He picked up our small, shared suitcase—because that’s what wonderful half-French boyfriends did, and we strolled towards the port, leaving the prison behind. Interspersed with typically French cafés, stylish boutique shops full of expensive fripperies lined the cobbled street. It was easy to understand why Lucien was so fond of the place; it whispered understated wealth in a way that other holiday destinations of the rich and famous flaunted their bling. Although he joined me in peering through windows and scoffing at the prices, Noah was mostly quiet.
“Are you nervous?” I asked.
We were approaching the marina. A picture-postcard stone archway curved between a cocktail bar and an antiques shop, framed in pink and yellow hollyhocks, and we stopped to admire it. An equally pretty cut-through path lay beyond, leading to a row of green-shuttered fisherman’s cottages. Noah scratched his head and frowned, oblivious to our pretty surroundings.
“Yeah, a bit. I’m not sure exactly how I feel. I’m all over the place, to be honest. It’s hard to explain.”
I took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Tell me about it?” I suggested. “As best you can?”
He huffed out a sigh and contemplated our joined hands before giving me a wry look. “Well. You’ll be pleased to hear that I’m still angry. About all sorts of stuff. About Guillaume shagging a random tourist on the beach, for instance, taking advantage of his flash footballer status. And that such a quick thoughtless thing could ruin my mum’s life when she was still a kid herself. Because of it, she resented me, so we’ve never really got on. I blame him for all of that. I’m angry, too, that he’s got this label as a murderer, a label he’ll always carry with him because it’s true. He is a murderer. Even if the guy he murdered wasn’t someone fit to be alive anyhow. And that I’ll always know I’m the son of a man who murdered someone.”
I nodded in what I hoped was a wise, encouraging manner. For a boy who couldn’t explain himself very well, he was doing a comprehensive job. “That’s…um…quite a lot of anger.”
“I haven’t finished yet.”
His throat worked as he swallowed before starting again. “I have a huge chip on my shoulder about stuff.”
“No shit.”
“Mostly about the inequality and unfairness of things,” he continued, with a glare through excessively thick eyelashes, a glare that had the effect of making me horny, not fearful. I bit my lip, suppressing a smirk.
“I hate that some kids, like Lucien’s, will grow up never wanting for anything, but still have to deal with plenty of abuse for having two dads. That kids like me never had a dad at all. That you were born with your hand missing, and blokes like that farmer, Rob, and the guy at the airport think it’s okay to give you grief for it. As if missing a hand on its own wasn’t bad enough. That some people live in massive stately homes and have more money than they can ever spend, while others are out on the street at night just trying to stay alive.”
He paused and huffed out a laugh. “I think you probably get the picture.”
That was quite a lot to unpack all at once, too much for someone like me. Instead, I dragged him into the alley; a huge lump had appeared in my throat, and I might have cried otherwise. Not because I was sad, but because my grumpy northern lad had a soul so full of fucking goodness that I needed him to know right now. And if anyone saw us, two men kissing and hugging and clinging to each other in the middle of the street, then I didn’t care. Mind you, this was France; emotional incontinence was positively encouraged. Anyone watching probably thought we were just work colleagues greeting each other after a lunch break spent apart.
“You’ve got me now, Noah. I can’t help with much of that, but you don’t need to shoulder it on your own any longer. You can share some of it with me.”
“Good, because I couldn’t do this—I couldn’t be here without you.”
I thought back to the airport and how easily and unthinkingly Noah heaved our bag into the overhead locker, then pretended he hadn’t noticed how long it took me to click together the two ends of my seatbelt. “I couldn’t do this without you either.”
He smiled at me then, and not the difficult to interpret smile that sometimes preceded the fight-or-fuck look. Merely a relieved one, as if he’d stumbled through the front door like my mum did sometimes with too many bags of shopping and managed to offload a couple onto me.
“My mum always tells me not to worry too much about the things we can’t change,” I said because bringing one’s mother into a tender romantic moment was always a good thing to do. I plunged on anyhow. “Acknowledge them, but then park them. And concentrate on the stuff you can change.”
I scrolled back through his list. His relationship with Guillaume—he could work on that. Perhaps with his mum, too, although I had a feeling that was a fight for another day. My missing hand was a lost cause; he didn’t need to be angry on my behalf about that, although knowing I had him in my corner, battling the starers and the whisperers and the damn fucking ignorant, was sexy as fuck.
Noah stroked his fingers through my hair. “That’s solid advice. Is your mum, like, a vicar or something?”
“We could always try and find someone for you to talk things through with,” I began hesitantly. Hesitantly because this conversation could go one of two ways. “You know, maybe a counsellor or someone?”
He picked up our bag again and planted a kiss on my nose. “Yes. You might be right. But I still hadn’t quite finished. Because you’ll also be pleased to hear that since I’ve been at Rossingley, I can now see the good too. Coming here to this island—seeing how beautiful it is and wanting to try to understand Guillaume better. I can see the good in Lucien and Jay and everyone else who has made me feel like I could belong somewhere. Like Lizzie behind the bar. I like drinking milk, so I can even see the good in the fucking cows. Not in that bloody bull though. But definitely in the cute manny looking at me as if I’ve grown three heads.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Noah
THE TALL IMPOSING house overlooking the far end of the port wasn’t as austere as I recollected from the dank film of January. Warm afternoon sunshine dappled the grey bricks, rendering them several shades lighter. And as we mounted the wide steps, I decided Marcel was exactly the sort of person who deserved to have plant pots full to bursting either side of his front door. A riot of colourful geraniums had replaced the winter pansies. He deserved a lover who bought fresh yellow and red flowers for his desk too. The man himself flung wide the grass-green front door before I even had a chance to lift the heavy iron knocker.
“Bonjour, bonjour! Entrez!”
At Rossingley, it was easy to forget Marcel was French. Having been educated and spent time working in England, he spoke English flawlessly. Under his own roof however, he fully embraced his origins. Getting beyond the front door took around ten minutes, what with the kissing, the kissing, and, oh yeah, the kissing. Not to forget the inquisition about the flight, the taxi, the short walk across the port. He was dressed chaotically, like someone chairing a very important business meeting but also planning on a spot of weeding during the coffee break.
In summary, he was delighted to see us.
Guillaume, my father, was more reserved. He politely asked Toby if he’d ever visited the island before, trying to conceal his anxiety with a firm handshake. I recognised it in the way he slightly rocked on his heels, stealing quick glances over towards Marcel, as if for reassurance. His mannerisms matched my own. Determined to avoid a single awkward lull in conversation, Marcel ushered us upstairs.
“Come, I’ll show you to your rooms; you can put that bag down. Can you manage? Guillaume, carry it for Noah…no, he’s managing…it’s okay. The rooms are just up here…mind the turn…the step can catch you out…aah…here we are…”
Seemed we were all a little anxious. Breathlessly, Marcel paused at the top of the stairs, and Guillaume laid a gentle hand at the small of his back.
“Relax, mon cœur,” he said. “There is no rush.”
Nodding rapidly, Marcel answered him in French, a flush of colour rising to his pale cheeks. Guillaume gave a low chuckle and rolled his eyes. “My husband has prepared two rooms for you.” He threw me an amused look. “I said you would probably only require one. They are the two at the end of that corridor.”
He pointed. “But the choice is yours. The bathroom is opposite.”
With his breathing back under control, Marcel added, “The yellow room has a lovely view of the port. The blue room is marginally bigger. And farther from…um…our room. Very…aah…private. And the bed is firmer.”
The blue room it was, then. The only view I’d be admiring for the next few nights stood right next to me.
Marcel grew increasingly flustered. “But you can decide, and…yes…as Guillaume said. We…what I mean to say is don’t let us being here…aah curtail your activities.”
Heat radiated from Toby, and I didn’t dare look anywhere other than at the bedroom doors, as if the room instructions had been terribly complicated. My father also bit his lip, clearly wrestling with a snort of laughter. For the record, I had no plans to curtail any of my activities, not where Toby was concerned.
“Marcel,” said Guillaume gently. “Why don’t we let the boys get settled?” He turned to me. “Come down when you’re ready. Take your time; Marcel and I usually enjoy a little siesta around this hour anyhow.”
“Oh my God.” Toby laughed as he closed the door of the blue room behind us. “Marcel is cute beyond words.”
I dumped the bag and wound my arms around his neck. As I reacquainted myself with Toby’s mouth, I happened to agree. My father and I shared the same taste in quirky men; both Toby and Marcel needed a little protecting from life’s harsh realities every now and again, a role my father and I were made for. Marcel’s strength lay in his gentleness and his sweet naivety, and I saw that in Toby too. Miraculously, both of them saw the good in men like me and my father.
