Page 29 of Pansies

Alfie blushed. He still wasn’t used to being complimented by other men or to how much he liked it. The occasional bluntness of it. None of thisyou have nice eyescrap that he usually got from women when they had their hands between his legs. And, of course, that made him remember Fen’s rough touches. His pale lips. His fierce glares. The taste of salt. Wrists beneath his hands.

“It felt like more than that. Like…I dunno…like he needed something from me. I was so fucking lost up there, Greg. So lost and…sort of at home at the same time.”5

Greg nudged lightly at the top of his arm. “Look, I know being gay is kind of a big deal to you. It doesn’t have to be, though.”

So people kept telling him. People who didn’t think it was a big deal. Except Alfie couldn’t be buggered to argue about it now. He slid a hand around Greg and pulled him a little closer. It felt nice. Not sexy nice. But nice. To want to a hold a man like you would a woman, in friendship, for comfort, because you could.

Greg sighed and nestled for a moment. He still fit very sweetly. “Alfie, you know you could probably have any guy in London? You could feel at home here too.”

Alfie stared into the muddle of light and shadow, their mingled reflections, hazy in the glass, and didn’t know how to answer. After a moment, he pulled out his phone and recoiled from the time. “Shit. I need to grab a couple of hours sleep before work. Are you crashing?”

Greg had that awkward look he got when he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure how to begin. In the end, he just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his designer-shabby jeans and nodded. Followed Alfie slowly to the spare room.

7

Dear Mum,

Winter is coming. That’s funny, and you won’t know why. But winter is coming, undramatically, in a gathering of grey. It wasn’t until I moved away that I realised how much winter is its own kingdom here. I wish I could see things the way you did. But all I see is this ghost of a ghost town.

I walked through the promenades at Little Haven today.1 That’s such a Victorian word. Promenades. A place where you promenade. I probably should have had a parasol, and a pink dress with a bustle, and a gentleman to take me by the arm. But all I had was the echo of my footsteps, and the promise of winter’s silence all around me.

Not even a group of kids with skateboards to shout obscenities at me as I passed. Do kids still have skateboards? But that’s what I remember, the rattle of wheels on tiles, the kick-punch laughter of recognisable strangers. Alfie Bell never had a skateboard, but he was here sometimes, slouched against one of the pillars, self-conscious, with a cigarette between his fingers.

They were so frightened of cigarettes, these rough-tough boys with their mincing inhalations. By the time I was fourteen,I was on a pack a day, and so proud of it. And I didn’t just stand around trying to look cool, I smoked. I really smoked. It was the perfect vice for me, so good, so bad, teaching you how to love the thing that hurts you.

I used to imagine, sometimes, smoking with him. With Alfie Bell. I’d watched him, fumbling, trying to make it look casual, like he knew what he was doing. (The way he kissed me by the Rattler, all bravado and confusion and tenderness.) So I would have to light his cigarette for him, just like in the movies, and give it to him, his lips pressed to the place where mine had been.2 And I’d dream of this too. Not this mediated kiss, but the light wavering at the tip of his lighter or the matchbox slipping from his unpractised hands.

I didn’t know you knew about the smoking, but of course you did. It was Dad, in the end, who made me stop. I’d come in from school, and I was making toast with too much butter, just like we like it, so that the plate glistens afterwards. I can’t remember what he was doing, but I remember what he said, sort of conversationally like he was asking if I had a lot of homework or if I’d had a good day at school (I always said yes, but I never had good days at school).

He said, “Why are you making your mother watch you kill yourself?”

Which is ironic on some level, isn’t it?

So, anyway, I stopped. And I’ve never smoked since. But maybe it wouldn’t matter since there’s nobody to hurt right now but me.

And Dad. But what would he say? How would he stop me, how would he help me, now he can’t sneak his love in next to yours as if I wouldn’t notice, and say “your mother thinks” or “your mother wants”? How do we do this without you?

He said it to me yesterday. As if nothing has happened or changed. As if it’s still true. “You know, Fen, your mother loves you very much.”

And why am I still thinking about Alfie Bell, when I have so much else to think about? Your shop to run. Which I’m failing at, by the way, ruining everything you loved, losing you all over again. It’s so funny, though, if funny is the right word, which I think it probably isn’t, that he’s a Londoner now. It was all over him, from his voice to his suit. It was only when he was naked—all hair and muscles and that gorgeous, vulgar tattoo—that he was real to me. The same boy who had hurt me inside this man who held me. The strangest thing is that I could never imagine him anywhere but here. And yet I’m the one who’s here. He’s the one who’s gone.

I’ll never see him again. Not after what I did when he came after me. I’m almost glad it’s just another thing you’ll never know. It should have been a victory—payback even—but I’m just embarrassed. I wish I could have been cold and scornful and indifferent or, at the very least, calm. But, instead, I keep showing him all these cracked and desperate bits of myself, everything I thought I’d put behind me a long time ago.3 It was probably just the shock of him, making the past feel closer than it should. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. How I’m supposed to bear this. Old anger and new pain, and the pure simplicity of missing you.

The truth is, I never expected to see Alfie Bell again. I haven’t thought of him in years, except for the occasional flash of remembered resentment. And I told David,4 of course, lying in his arms as we swapped the stories of our pasts until it all seemed as trivial as cockle shells and sea-glass, compared to this fresh, new love. But, somehow, it’s all become real again: this bold, beautiful manI have loved, hated, and forgotten, who has never, ever spared a single thought for me.

Beyond the promenades the amphitheatre is empty, and beyond the amphitheatre the half-shell fountains are dry.

I’m cold all the time, except I don’t feel cold. A proper Northern boy, at last, wandering the clifftops without a coat.

Love always,

Fen

8

Alfie spent most of the next week torturing himself by Googling South Shields. It filled him with an awkward mixture of pain, longing, and uncertainty, and seemed a fair substitute for Googling Fen, which was what he really wanted to do. He’d typedFen O’Donaghueinto the search box so many times, it was starting to autopopulate whenever he typed anything beginning withF. Though he’d just about managed not to actually click on any of the links. He was pretty sure that would cross the line from slightly weird into actively unhealthy. It was hard not to be curious, though. Because Fen was the last person he would have expected to find still living at home. There’d always been something different about him—not just the gay thing, but something…else, restless and delicate and almost magical, like a wet-winged butterfly, newly emerged and struggling to fly. So why hadn’t he flown? What was in South Shields for someone like Fen? What would hold him there?

On Thursday morning, Alfie finally cracked and did the unthinkable. He walked into the office of the old man, J.D. Jarndyce himself, explained that everything was in order and that he needed a long weekend to take care of some personal business. And then he left, putting his odds of still having a job onMonday at about fifty-fifty. Clearly his priorities were all screwed up because he was finding it hard to care. It wasn’t that he didn’t like his job—on the contrary, he liked the money and the power a lot—but the idea of doing something a bit less intense, a bit slower paced, had been nudging the back of his mind for months. It was a dangerous thought for London. Best ignored, like the fact his fancy sofa was really fucking uncomfortable.

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