My Dear I Wanted to Tell You. Louisa Young

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СКАЧАТЬ Riley accepted. Hark at me! One!

      ‘The problem is, it does hurt people,’ he went on. ‘There’s always someone who is going to be hurt by one not doing what they want. Or by one doing what they don’t want one to do, like—’ and he had had no intention of using this example, but it leapt out, as the things uppermost in our minds tend to, unexpectedly and unwelcomely ‘—loving someone they don’t want you to love . . .’

      Terence understood completely. Riley was glad to be understood. His fury and hurt about Nadine’s removal were beginning to surge and shovel around inside him now, fuelled no doubt by the wine, so he accepted another glass, as a result of which he accepted some whisky – quite a lot – as a result of which he found himself an hour or so later spreadeagled across a green chenille blanket on Terence’s single bed with Terence’s mouth around his tumescent dick.

      He liked it. Oh, God, it was magnificent, the wonderful warmth, and surging . . .

      At least, his dick liked it. His dick absolutely loved it.

      Riley lurched from the bed, pushing the blond head aside. Terence called out to him but already Riley was staggering like a clown in his falling-down trousers; with his shirt-tails flying he was down the many flights of whirling stairs, out into the storm, hurtling up Exhibition Road, making distance, his heart battering, his chest tight, clambering the black railings into the park. He flung himself breathless on the turf on his back. The rain was pouring down, punching his face.

       A big girl’s blouse, a posh man’s plaything with a fake posh accent, nancy boy to a nancy posh artist in nancy fucking Kensington smoking fucking cigars. Sensitivity, my arse. Artistic temperament and fucking sensitivity.

       Fucking posh fucking

      But they’re not all . . . said a sane little voice beneath his fury.

      Was it all based on that? Bloody Terence – and Sir Alfred? He’d never even noticed Sir Alfred wasn’t married – it had never . . .

       Nadine –

       Nadine . . .

       Bloody Waveneys, bloody bloody posh bastards all the fucking same.

       Not good enough for their girl, only fit to be used by their boy.

       I should just go round there and . . .

      Fury was consuming him. The first person – other than himself – to touch it had been a man. The first time he came off – other than by his own hand – a man. A man he liked. A coming off he liked.

       Do I go to hell now? To prison, certainly, if anybody found out. Or I’ve got some horrible disease . . .

      And now he would have to lie to her all his life.

      What life? What life, exactly, was he imagining anyway? How could he imagine any life with her? How would that ever come to be? Nadine will spend her life with a gentleman. You are not a gentleman. It’s been made perfectly clear.

      Maybe, but I’m not like Terence either . . .

       Yes, you are. You did it, you liked it – you’re one of them. You always said you didn’t mind what people did but look at you now . . . You’re ashamed because you’re one of them.

      I’m ashamed because I’m not one of them. If I was I wouldn’t mind . . .

       Really?

      I’d be up there still with Terence . . . well, maybe not Terence . . .

       Oh? Who, then? What handsome man do you yearn for?

      Nobody! Nobody! My mother was right, they just want something from you . . .

      He lay until the rain was pooling in his coat, his limbs gradually seizing up with the cold and the wet. Finally he rolled over and slept a little in the short light night, his nose in the short brown and ivory-white stalks of the cropped grass.

      Within hours the day dawned, cool and clear. He scraped himself up, brushing the grass from his coat and trousers, tucking in his shirt, rubbing at his face as if that would make it look better. He didn’t want to go up to Bayswater Road, or to Orme Square. He didn’t want to run into anyone. He didn’t know what to do. He had been out all night – Sir Alfred . . . Mrs Briggs . . . what could he say to them? What are you meant to say?

      He walked the other way, trying to ease his stiff legs, down towards High Street Kensington. Kensington Palace looked beautiful, floating on the morning mist, illuminated as if from within by the early sun, and the statue of Victoria – the Bun Penny – glowed like a pearl. This is how Terence should have painted it, he thought. Damn Terence.

      He stopped in at the Lyons Tea House, and ordered tea. He stared at the thick white cup until the waitress suggested he buy another or move on, would you, because there’s others need the table, and then buying another, and another. I should go to Sir Alfred’s, he thought. Apologise, at least, for staying out, even though I can’t explain. He’ll think the worse of me . . . but then I think the worse of him . . .

       Oh, it’s not his fault.

      I should go home, he thought. But he knew he wasn’t going home. What – talk to Mum about it? Or Dad? This was not a situation a young man took home.

      Where does a young man take this situation? he thought, and he laughed, a sleepless, angry, hungry, lonely, embarrassed, humiliated laugh. He knew perfectly well where this was leading. It was inexorable.

      His seventh cup of tea stood cold in front of him.

      *

      He was still damp through from the park when he went up to the recruiting station. He had calmed down a little, but not much. He was going to do it. He bloody was. With him gone, Nadine could go back to Sir Alfred’s. He’d prove himself a man, in the army. Hard work. Proper work. No nancy stuff – no art. Make Nadine proud. Or knock her out of his system.

      ‘Here I am,’ he said to the recruiting sergeant. ‘You can have me.’ He gave him a big grin. Change. Big and total change.

      You only had to be five foot five now. He was sent in the back to be looked at. He stripped off and flung his shoulders back, coughing in the cold back room while another posh man held his balls. Was he eyeing him up? Stop it, Riley, they’re not all like that. Next behind him was a tough and scrawny Cockney youth who said, apropos the balls situation: ‘They’ve always got you by the bollocks one way or another, ain’t they? The women and the money and the fuckin’ upper classes . . .’

      Riley grinned again. Here we go. That’s more like it.

      He went next door to fill in forms. Name, address (he put Sir Alfred’s); next of kin (Mum and Dad); DoB (26 March 1896), height and weight (5 ft 9 ins, 10 st 11 lbs), eyes hair complexion (grey black pale). Wages – half to Mum and Dad. Regiment: no idea – you tell me. Length of service: one year or duration of war. Duration of war, of course. He didn’t want to spend a whole year in the army.

      *

      Riley СКАЧАТЬ