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1
The ale was far too hoppy for Farrier’s liking, and the band’s repertoire consisted of a grand total of seven songs, through which they were cycling with almost impressive regularity. Farrier suspected he was the only one still sober enough to realise. The paper streamers some poor adjutant had spent the afternoon draping over the rafters were sagging alarmingly, and someone’s over-zealous jitterbugging had toppled the coat-stand. And it was hot – stiflingly so, hot with the crush of bodies in motion. The whirl of it dizzying even to watch.
The dancing was exuberant and very bad, and few of the new recruits could handle their drink. To a man, they were ungainly and uncoordinated, clutching their hard-won and generally exasperated partners with a mixture of glee and grim determination. Every so often a shriek of indignation from the mêlée indicated that one of their number had taken liberties with the placement of his hands, or that someone’s toes had borne the brunt of twelve stone of galumphing Pilot Officer.
The band started up again with their fuzzy approximation of “Comes Love,” which Farrier took as his cue to duck out into the merciful cool of the evening. A sudden lance of light speared out across the deserted apron before he shut the door behind him and was alone again in the dark.
He watched his breath plume into the night and considered the afternoon’s escape, which had been deeply improbable, and certainly undeserved. He’d bared his belly to a 109 and gotten away with it, and no amount of agonising over the paperwork had solved the question of why, when Tamber hadn’t put a foot wrong in all the time Farrier had known him, and had still ended up in the drink while Farrier scarpered back to base, feeling stupid and guilty.
There was a retching sound behind him, and a miserable groan that took Farrier back a decade to the very worst of his undergraduate days. There was a shadow bent over behind the porch, vomiting theatrically into the dirt.
“You’ll feel better for it,” Farrier said, which was exactly what Canfield had said to him that afternoon about helping him clear Tamber’s footlocker, and which had been – as now – a barefaced lie.
“No, I bloody won’t,” the shadow said, and spat into the dirt one last time before straightening up. He sounded pitiful, and as he moved into the meagre moonlight, Farrier noticed that he looked it, too, somehow both green and grey at the same time, and a little unmoored about the eyes.
“Oh, fuck, sorry sir,” the lad said, wiping his mouth inelegantly with the back of his hand. “Didn’ – thought you were – sorry sir –” he swallowed hard, and took a moment to compose himself. “Fuck. Sorry, sir.”
I thought you were dead, Farrier nearly said, because it was true – they’d lost one of the new batch the previous week – an entirely avoidable chute malfunction – and Farrier’d been sure it had been the mouthy Scot. Evidently not, he thought, watching the lad go cross-eyed with the effort of standing still and more or less upright.
“Not dancing, sir?” the lad said.
“I’m not,” Farrier replied. “And nor should you, in that state.”
The lad made a complicated gesture with one hand which conveyed his opinion on this suggestion. “S’only eleven. Nobby owes me a pint.”
“Dare say Nobby can carry it over to the next dance.”
“Might be dead by then.” Farrier didn’t enquire whether he meant himself or the indebted Nobby – he supposed the statement was equally applicable to both, and equally accurate.
He laughed despite himself. “Good to see you’ve developed a healthy fatalistic streak in – what’s it been, a month?”
The lad was too busy concentrating on staying on his feet to respond. He was peering at Farrier with poorly-disguised curiosity.
“Got a girl at home, is that it? You’d think she wouldn’t mind you having a wee dance – these lassies aren’t much cop, you know.”
That’s enough, Farrier should have said. He’d had blokes hauled up in front of the Wingco for less. The display was almost touching, though. The not-quite-convincing swagger – the veil of bravado, which Farrier was not quite seasoned enough to have forgotten himself. And underneath the sickly pallor, the lad was uncomplicatedly, artlessly beautiful – and Farrier was a pathetic and lonely fool.
“Tell you what,” he said, suddenly aware that it was October, and chilly, and that Tamber was still dead, and would be tomorrow, “you let me put you to bed and I’ll dance at the next.”
The lad – Collins, Farrier remembered – snorted. “Fair enough, sir.”
Collins was in K-block with a few other rookies, and it was a long and heavy stagger across base, occasionally tripping over nothing, Collins leaning unhelpfully across his shoulder. They didn’t speak, and the only sound, now that they were away from the mess and its riot of sound, was the uneven crunch of their footsteps and Collins’ sour, heavy breathing across Farrier’s neck. There were worse ways to spend an evening, Farrier mused, and was briefly, madly glad that he’d lived to drag a soused Pilot Officer through the dark with very little hope of thanks at the other end. His turn for luck, and Tamber’s number up.
Collins fell into his bunk with a beery grumble, sprawled carelessly and unselfconsciously across the thin mattress. It was clear he’d not move until morning, and he’d wake cold and uncomfortable. It felt too much of an intimacy to drag a blanket across him, however, or to nudge his legs into a less twisted position.
“Expect to see you ready for action first thing, Collins,” Farrier said, thinking that if he’d had a few himself he might have perched on the bunk opposite and asked Collins about his childhood, or whatever banal topic might seem interesting to a drunk.
“Remember you’ve got to dance next time, sir,” Collins slurred, sleep and drink muddying his words.
Might be dead by then, Farrier thought, and nodded, though Collins had passed out by then, and could not see.
*
2
Dicky sidled over to the banquette where Farrier was perched, and handed over a snifter of brandy.
“You do know how to punish yourself, don’t you?” he said, laughing.
Farrier grunted. The brandy was too cold. “How was I to know – well, suppose I should have been more – overt. Made my intentions – well, anyway. My own fault.”
“Poor form, rather – driving up with a fellow, and then not even –”
“Dick, he’s – it’s – I offered him a lift. I’d accept a couple of bob for the petrol, but I don’t exactly require –”
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me, you know that’s not what I mean. I just mean he’s throwing that pink thing all over the place – God knows what’s in it, I think Lou found an old bottle of crème de cassis in the cellar – and he’s making a spectacle, don’t you think?”
Farrier threw what was supposed to be an indifferent look across the room, as though he’d not been watching Collins like a hawk since he’d slunk off to the corner with one of Dicky’s handsome musician friends. Collins had his arms around the man’s neck, and was swaying just deliberately enough that it might just about be called dancing. As Dicky had feared, the cocktail clutched in one hand was mostly ending up on the carpet.
“He’s – he’s just enjoying himself,” he grumbled defensively. Dicky laughed again; he’d always seen right through him.
“What on earth did he think – I know you’ve a reputation as a fearful philanthropist, but honestly, Don, is he dense?”
Farrier cringed. He’d assumed they’d finally found themselves on the same page – he’d chickened out of proposing a trip into town several times, and eventually landed on some vague and stilted invitation involving idiotic phrases like gentlemen of a similar persuasion and company where one can be oneself. Collins had stared at him, nonplussed, which he supposed was only to be expected, until finally he’d thrown caution to the winds and said, with a note of desperation, “Look, Mal, I’m – whatever you’d like to – I’m queer, in case you’d not already put that one together – and I’ll be at a party on Saturday, and if you’d like to come, you should. There. So.”
And they’d – after Collins had not exactly found the words, but had managed something of a strangled nod, and a slightly crazed smile – they’d driven to town together, and it was only because Farrier’d borrowed Bellingham’s belchy old Morris Eight, which required full concentration and both hands on the wheel at both times, that he hadn’t reached across to squeeze Collins’ knee, or else grip his hand briefly. They’d kept catching each other’s eyes at junctions and traffic lights, and just before Farrier had rung the bell to Dicky’s place, and Farrier’s stomach had spasmed each time. Or maybe they hadn’t, after all, because Collins now had a hand on the man’s hip, and the man was whispering something effortless into his ear.
Farrier attacked his brandy again. He supposed it might be enough, merely to be the facilitator of Collins’ happiness. This was all Dicky’s fault – Dicky, and his damnable collection of jazz records.
“Well, you’d better sort it out, Farrier,” Dicky said, patting his knee a little condescendingly before rising to ply more anchovy tarts on his guests. “The wind might change, and then that face of yours will be stuck like that.”
Farrier frowned into the snifter. The evening had been a total dud. Even Sammy, who was always pleased to see Farrier, and who fixed a very decent post-coital cup of tea, had shipped out to France a fortnight prior. The man’s lips were actually touching Collins’ neck now. It was pathetic, Farrier thought. He threw himself on the mercy of the gods every day, several times a day, stretched his mortality to breaking-point, and here he was, morose and bitter and jealous over a boy who’d not been south of Carlisle before the start of the war.
He was staring at his shoes and wondering whether he was sober enough to make it to his parents’ place in Belgravia without hailing a taxi, when the banquette rocked next to him.
“Aren’t you dancing?” Collins smelled sweet, and he was talking a little too loudly.
“No,” Farrier said shortly.
“Well, shall we go, then? They’ve gone and run out of devilled eggs, anyway.”
Farrier stopped himself before saying something childish and mean. “You needn’t leave on my account,” he said, and was surprised to find he’d managed to inject some warmth into it. “You look like you’re having fun – that was the whole point.”
Collins looked crestfallen. The colour was high in his cheeks, and he had a slightly clownish look, his hair sticking on end and his tie loose around his neck. “Oh,” he said. “Thought we – thought we were meant to be – you know – having fun – you know, together.”
“Oh, well,” he spluttered. “Yes. If you like. At least that’s what I – but don’t let me get in the way.”
Collins was more than tipsy; he must have been – that must have been why he lurched across the banquette and kissed Farrier on the mouth, inexpertly, tasting of crème de cassis and devilled eggs, probably. “Why would I think you’re in the way?” he mumbled against Farrier’s cheek, and then, when Farrier said nothing, “Are you sure you don’t want to dance?”
Dimly, Farrier saw Dicky standing by the mantelpiece, raising a glass and smirking in his direction. He stood, and dragged Collins to his feet, trying to remember in which room and which pile they’d deposited their coats.
“No, I don’t want to dance,” he said firmly, and slung his arm around Collins’ shoulder as he steered him towards the door.
*
3
Farrier’s mother found him hiding behind an ornamental fern with his cousin.
“Donald, I’ve asked you once already. Will you please show a little breeding and see to your guests?”
“They’re not my guests, mother,” he said. “I didn’t ask Hester to get married.” He and Agatha had managed the best part of a bottle of port between them, and he was feeling restlessly belligerent.
His mother narrowed her eyes, and lowered her voice. “I shan’t ask you again. I’ll not have you ruining your sister’s wedding day.”
“I’m hardly ruining it. I’m here, as directed, and I imagine all the requisite people have caught sight of me in my uniform by now. Surely I’ve served my purpose.”
He’d had years of practise; her lips went white, and her lacquered hair vibrated with rage.
“I’ll get a dance out of him, Aunt Rosa,” Agatha said brightly, and slipped her arm through his, tugging him to the floor before he could dig his heels in.
“I don’t want to dance with you,” he snapped, as she arranged his hands for him.
“I know that, ninny.” Her cheeks were flushed, and she’d mislaid one of her gloves. “But I don’t think your old mater would approve of you foxtrotting with that footman you’ve been making eyes at all night, would she?”
Farrier didn’t bother to deny it. “Don’t tread on my toes,” he grumbled. “Half-cut after a few glasses of port. Don’t know what they teach you at Somerville.”
“Discretion, mostly. And Euripides on alternate Tuesdays.”
Farrier snorted. He’d missed her. He read her letters out to Collins, sometimes, though he could never quite capture her blunt tone. He hadn’t told her about Collins, which he supposed was something of a betrayal of their thirteen year pact to tell each other everything.
“You do look nice in your uniform, anyway,” Agatha said, pushing him round a little unsteadily.
“So I’m told.” Perhaps Collins hadn’t told him in so many words, but the look in his eyes the last time he’d seen Farrier in his dress uniform, and the ferocity of their fucking afterwards, had conveyed the message clearly enough.
“Oh, you and your false modesty.”
“Part of my charm,” Farrier said distantly – he’d stopped listening properly. The footman was trying to catch his eye again, and Farrier was trying steadfastly to ignore it. The port was sending him melancholy. He felt Collins’ absence like a bruise, ready to be prodded, ready to smart if pressed too hard.
Have fun, Collins had said, laughing at him from his bunk as he’d left for the train. Doubt it, Farrier had replied mulishly, when really he had wanted to say something slushy about how time spent apart from him was time wasted, or else something lewd about the various ways he might wordlessly impress on Collins the depth of his ardour the next time they saw each other.
But Pertwee had been dealing a hand of patience on the upturned milk crate in the centre of the room, and so he’d said none of it, merely frowned in what he hoped was a gesture of promise before leaving, and now was waltzing jerkily and obtusely around the family pile with the keeper of his secrets, thinking about how he’d not yet danced with Collins, ever, and how very much he wanted to see him red-faced and breathless and out of step, and to have his arms looped gracelessly about his neck. How they had better snatch the chance before long, before his luck or Collins’ ran out.
*
4
Macleod’s idea, of course - as were most of the camp’s hare-brained schemes. He’d been responsible for the laundry chute caper, and for the botched self-poisoning which had landed him in the san for a month (and not, as he had hoped, on a train to Zurich). And now – with help from Dinnock, who had been a boarder at Fettes, and considered himself mildly Scottish as a result – an improvised ceilidh.
Notionally, the ruckus of twenty four pairs of feet thundering up and down the hall was intended to drown out the rhythmic clink of Cookson’s chisel. Farrier, watching Macleod fashion a makeshift kilt from his ruined bed linen, was beginning to suspect the concept had rather run away with itself.
“You’re a bit lopsided, Cam,” he said idly, thumbing a meagre pinch of tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. They hadn’t had a Red Cross shipment in months.
Macleod craned his neck to assess his hemline. “Aye, you’re right, damn you. Give us a hand, there’s a good lad.”
“Not sure asking an Englishman for help’s very much in the spirit of Jacobite rebellion, you know,” Farrier said, heaving himself over the side of the bunk and dropping heavily to Macleod’s level. “Edwards was doing something nefarious with a packet of pins a few nights ago; you might ask him for help.”
“Oh, be a chum, Farrier. You’ve nothing better to do.”
Farrier fished his copy of Return of the Native from beneath his pillow. “You’ll manage,” he said. “Besides,” he added, shrugging, “I don’t know the first thing about Scotsmen.”
The ceilidh was, as promised, raucous, disorganised, and downright dangerous. Kettley was a decent violinist, but Allingham was incapable of sticking to tempo, and his drumming sped up, imperceptibly but inexorably, until each number was danced at breakneck and escalating speed. The hall was far too small for their untamed whirling, and Macleod’s calling was haphazard and often misleading. At least once a number the sets got hopelessly tangled, leading to a pile-up during the Dashing White Sergeant, two sprained ankles in Strip-the-Willow, and a barely-averted fistfight halfway through the Virginia Reel.
Farrier sat out until the end, when a spate of retirements through injury compelled him to join a set for the Gay Gordons. It took some time for Macleod to demonstrate, with much manhandling of Peters, the correct hold, and once they began they all promptly forgot it, and found their hands hopelessly tangled, and at least a third of the sets walking forwards when they ought to have been travelling backwards, or vice versa.
And there was the usual confusion about who was meant to be leading, and the usual stiff distance between the partners, for the avoidance of all doubt. Farrier was leading a dough-faced lieutenant who kept jerking away whenever Farrier’s hand touched his side. It was tempting to hiss at him that he needn’t worry, he wasn’t at all Farrier’s sort, but Farrier had learned some time ago that few fights were worth picking, and besides, now that he’d been dragged into taking part, he was damned if he’d half-arse it.
The improvised band ran away with their own excitement again, and the couples span more wildly, any grace or rhythm long abandoned, and Farrier’s lieutenant kept reaching the wrong way for Farrier’s hand, and Farrier found himself counting quietly but insistently under his breath, emphatic on the beat, wherever it was.
He’d been so disciplined. Two years and the best part of three months, and he’d trained his mind to keep Collins carefully fenced off, confined to manageable times and places. A brief fifteen minutes’ anguish once or twice a month - while he read his latest letter four, five times, committing the words almost to memory, stopped himself from pressing his mouth to the signature, folded it carefully with the rest, and blocked all thoughts of Collins bent over a page with his hair nearly brushing the paper, or of Collins moistening the flap of the envelope with the tip of his tongue. And sometimes in the early morning while the dormitory was shuffling into another reluctant day, he’d cast a hope upwards; not quite a prayer, but a blind wish. I hope Collins has a good day. Anything more specific, anything more lofty, would have been too difficult, too raw, too brutally honest about the unlikelihood of his wish being fulfilled.
Two years and three months, and he’d kept Collins, his face, his voice, his hands, the line of his shoulders, his vulgar, precious laugh, locked away, mostly, for his own sanity. But the violin, both manic and mournful, and the ruckus of feet, and Cameron Macleod’s yawp, and the rudimentary kilts which were now unravelling and jumbling around their uncoordinated ankles, and the lieutenant’s unwilling hand on his hip, and his own frantic heartbeat – suddenly he missed Collins more sharply, more acutely than at any time before, like a wound.
It cracked open and let out all the pain trapped inside, a chasm in the earth – everything Collins had ever told him about his youth, about his mother fussing with his shirt, about how his knees were always scabbed and scarred and ugly, about how they kept the windows of the village hall shut to keep the midges out, and whirled and whirled until their hair was dark with sweat and their hands slipped whenever they took a hold, and the floorboards bowed, and they slipped out into the dusk to kiss certain girls and fondle others, and came back red-faced and bitten, to re-take their places in the set. How the summer evenings seemed endless.
Farrier took the lieutenant’s hand again, and set off into the polka section again, and stamped harder, and wondered whether he’d stand another two years of this, or another ten, or a whole unthinkable lifetime.
*
5
“Your friend not with you?” Sukey asked.
“Hm?”
“That lanky young Caledonian. With the –” he waved his hand vaguely at his own forehead, which Farrier supposed was intended to convey the unique flop and lustre of Collins’ hair. “Bought it, I assume. Rough luck.”
Farrier’s ribs felt as though they’d been sharpened. “No. No, he made it through. After a fashion.”
“Ditched you, then? Looked like the affair of the century, last time I saw you both. We all noticed –”
“Look,” Farrier said, deciding not to care how woefully transparent his attempt at deflection, “why don’t you go and ask that Frog Spencer brought along to dance?”
“Oh, very well, be like that,” Sukey purred, rolling his eyes. “Though I do think it’s a poor, poor show – all this secrecy.”
Farrier shrugged. Why he’d come was anyone’s guess. He’d not much liked Sukey in 1935, and he liked him less now, a full decade later, when so many of Farrier’s friends were dead, and Sukey had had the temerity to survive, and to continue blazing through London with his eyes always sliding sideways in search of a more diverting conversation – as though nothing had happened.
He returned to his drink, which was too sweet, and to his smoke, which was one of Parry-Michaels’ menthol abominations. He’d spent an hour that afternoon crammed in a telephone box near Charing Cross, feeding the machine with coins and trying to keep his voice measured as he and Collins went round in circles, and circles, and circles. The line was terrible; it was miracle enough that he’d convinced Collins to cycle to the only box in the village.
Indecision had always been Collins’ difficulty – he’d been a liability the first few times they went up, unable to commit to a manoeuvre, too caught up in the possible combinations of consequences. He’d done the same over the telephone that afternoon – the same as he’d been doing for a good month prior – going through the reasons, which were sounding more and more like excuses, or like apologies, or at their worst like farewells. His mother was ailing, or his uncle needed help with the sheep, or he didn’t want to live on Farrier’s charity, or his vision still wasn’t quite right, after that last smash, which Farrier had not been around to see, or he just needed some time, some time, just a little more time, as though time had not been cruel enough to them both already.
“I think we should make a decision. Whether this is viable – whether this is worth pursuing,” Farrier had said coldly, which was code for do you love me – and heard Collins’ voice, tinny and sad, down the line, saying, “Farrier, it’s not that I don’t – I can’t explain – things are difficult right now –” which struck Farrier as one of the more ridiculous things he’d ever heard him say.
They’d not seen each other for seven weeks, since Collins had met Farrier off the boat, and laughed at how closely they’d cropped his hair, and dragged him off to a discreet hotel for three days of creaking, rusty lovemaking, just frantic enough to leave little energy for awkward and sentimental questions about each other’s state of mind, or about how they’d survived the past five years. It had not been enough: they’d just begun to realise that some things were easier without the constant pound of adrenaline, and some things significantly harder, when Collins had been called away to his father’s death-bed, leaving Farrier alone in a country he barely recognised, aching with old desire and new hope.
“I know things are difficult. That’s why I thought we could – Christ, Mal, you make it so hard for people to help you.”
“I’m afraid he’s disconnected, caller,” the operator’s voice came, clipped and calm. “Shall I try again?”
Farrier closed his eyes briefly. “No,” he said. “I’m out of sixpences, at any rate. Thanks anyway.”
The line went dead, and Farrier whacked the receiver against the apparatus for want of any better outlet. And now he was here, watching Sukey blow smoke silkily at Spencer and his olive-complexioned French friend, and wondering whether - if he left in the next ten minutes – he might just about catch the sleeper from Kings Cross.
He set his drink down on a windowledge and strode over to the bar, where Jimmy Preston was deep in conversation with a short ashy boy who bore a passing resemblance to Leslie Howard.
“Care to dance?” he asked brusquely, extending a hand.
Jimmy batted the hand away. “Don, we’re having a conversation.”
“No, it’s alright,” the boy said, wiping his hand on his trousers and taking Farrier’s. “I’d like to.”
“There,” Farrier said. “Doesn’t say much for your conversation.”
“Oh, shove off,” Jimmy said, grinning.
The boy slipped easily into a casual hold, nothing too intimate, and nothing which aped too closely the rigid, spine-splaying poses his sister’s governess had tried to drum into him one horrid summer. It was a jolly, languorous sort of number, and most of the other dancers were approximating something like a shag.
“Come here often?” the boy asked boldly.
“Not lately.”
“Didn’t think I’d seen you about – shame, really. You’re a decent dancer, for a –” He stopped, which Farrier supposed was a blessing, and had the grace to look sheepish.
“I was a guest of Herr Hitler for a few years. Put a dent in my dancing career somewhat.”
It was clear the boy had either failed to grasp his meaning, or had decided not to care. “You know Jimmy, then?”
They had struck up a comfortable rhythm. The boy was wearing a beautiful charmeuse shirt in a glassy shade of aquamarine; it felt divine beneath Farrier’s fingers. “Yes,” Farrier replied, without much enthusiasm. “We met before the war.”
“I was meant to be staying with him,” the boy said, also sounding slightly bored, “but then Dicky’s got a burst water pipe, so he’s colonised the spare bedroom, and then there’s some old school chum turned up – he’s over there somewhere, his suit’s far too large for him – and he’s taken the camp bed, so I suppose it’ll just be the sofa cushions for me.”
This was where Farrier was meant to interject and say of course he couldn’t sleep on the sofa cushions, and wasn’t it handy, he’d got some rooms just round the corner, or a few stops away on the Bakerloo, or wherever, and wouldn’t he be more comfortable there, and if they left now they could pick up a half-bottle of whisky from the off-licence on the corner before it closed. The boy slid against his side, and his shirt shimmered in the low light. His hair was so blond it was almost white, and his eyelashes were like lace.
“Sounds rough,” Farrier said, and attempted – clumsily – a slightly more energetic step to introduce a little distance between their bodies. “You’ll have to raid Jimmy’s wine cellar before you go to bed – make it a little comfier.”
The boy took it with good grace, and made a little flourish of his own, turning his knees outwards in fluid figure-of-eight movements which suggested he’d been flattering – or at least humouring – Farrier when he’d praised his dancing.
“Thanks,” Farrier said as the number ended. “I’ve got to be going. I’m heading up to Edinburgh to see my boy friend.” It was true when it left his lips, and felt right, and hopeful. He felt almost like laughing.
The boy glanced at his wristwatch. “Cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?”
“Oh, at the worst I’ll get the milk train up first thing tomorrow. Give my regards to Dicky – haven’t seen him since before Dunkirk.”
He pushed his way through dancing couples without looking back, and took the steps two at a time, up into the night in search of a taxi, breathless and impatient, imagining how Collins’ skin would feel under his hands, and how much softer than charmeuse.
*
+1
It took only three trips to lug Collins’ neatly boxed possessions up to the flat; but it was mid-July, and the flat was at the top of a tall townhouse in Pimlico, five flights up, and they were breathless and sweating by the time the last of it was piled in the middle of the kitchen floor. Farrier felt a brief stab of panic.
“It’s –” he began.
“Give us the tour, then, Farrier,” Collins said. He’d stripped down to his shirt-sleeves, and there were dark stains under the arms and at the neck. Something about him seemed to be pulsing with life, in a way Farrier had never seen. Or not since ‘39.
There wasn’t much to it. They were in the eaves, and Farrier noticed belatedly that Collins had to stoop in places – in the passageway that led to the cramped and windowless bathroom, and on the landing which they shared with a young Jamaican doctor and his heavily pregnant wife.
It was not quite shabby – a thin coat of white wash throughout made it feel bright, and clean enough, minus the scuff marks on the wall where Farrier had struggled to fit the lumpy moss green sofa through the door. But it was small, and sparse, and even with a few of Farrier’s books lining the planks he’d slung between stacks of bricks, in lieu of proper shelves, and even with their jackets hung behind the door and a photograph of the two of them, from before they had been in love, propped on the mantelpiece, it still didn’t seem quite theirs, not yet. He followed Collins through each room, watching his shoulders and the back of his neck for the smallest reaction.
It was stuffy and hot in the larger bedroom; the sun poured in for most of the morning and made it a perfect greenhouse.
“Got all the windows open, but it’s still –” he began apologetically.
“Farrier, it’s brill,” Collins said quietly. He had his fingers folded around the metal bedstead. Chipped and battered, and the mattress already sagging a little on the old springs, and covered unevenly in the crocheted blanket his grandmother had made during the last war from old scraps of yarn, the only thing he’d taken from his parents’ home. It had never fit: too many colours to match any of the pristine furnishings, too untidy, too much life.
“You like it?” Farrier asked. He wondered which side of the bed would end up becoming his, and which of them would wake first, and claim the lav, and whether there’d be room for them both to shave side by side, and whether Collins would wear slippers round the flat, or go barefoot.
“I love it. Come here.”
Collins kissed him standing next to their bed, his shirt sleeves still rolled up to his elbows, and it felt a little more like a home.
“There’s – come on, there’s something else I want to show you.”
In the kitchen, he skirted round the boxes of Collins’ things, which would soon be mixed with his in the cupboards and wardrobes, and hoisted the sash window wide open.
“Look,” he said, and stuck his head out, indicating that Collins should do the same.
“Fuck me,” Collins breathed. The slope of the roof ended above them, and a foot below the windows ran a narrow gulley, lined with lead and just wide enough for the packing crates Farrier had pushed out there as makeshift stools. The building’s façade rose up, ornately corniced, high enough that, if they sat outside, they would be invisible to those on the street below. From up there they could see endless snaking rooftops, and cranes, and what might have been St Paul’s. And sky – so much sky.
“Jesus, that view,” Collins said.
“Worth five flights of stairs, I suppose. We’ve done enough for today, I reckon. Grab a couple of beers from the ice box. I’ll get the Decca – might as well enjoy it, don’t you think?”
By the time he’d burrowed through his own boxes in the smaller bedroom and found what he was looking for, Collins had clambered out of the window and was basking with a beer at his lips.
“Must be a whole pile of them elsewhere; these were the only two I could find.” Farrier stuck his head out of the window and held up a couple of records for his approval.
Collins squinted. “Vera, I reckon. Wind it slowly – remember the crank comes off if you’re too rough with it. Shall I take it?”
“I’ll just prop it on the table – if I put it near enough to the window. It’ll take too much space otherwise.”
He positioned the gramophone carefully on the kitchen table, and lowered the needle to the record, then climbed out of the window to join Collins.
They drank in silence for a while, Vera Lynn floating out across the rooftops, the sky slowly turning pink and then a brilliant, improbable orange.
“Dance with me,” Collins said suddenly. Farrier glanced at him over his bottle. Whatever had seemed full of life within him earlier that evening had multiplied. He seemed to be emitting light, to be gobbling up the last of the sun, glowing from the inside out. So much of Farrier’s recent life had been dark, and grey, and cold, and loveless, and Collins was none of those things, and was here, right now, contented and whole and aglow.
“Alright,” he replied, realising as he set his beer down on the packing crate that this would be the first time they’d danced with each other. He refrained from mentioning this – Collins was smiling, and holding out his arms almost shyly, and there were few words for a feeling like this, and many that might ruin it.
The record was old and warped, and the band fuzzed in and out occasionally, Vera’s voice clear and sweet, singing if you’d like the spring in the fall, it would be no trouble at all. Collins’ hand stole between his shoulderblades and rested softly there. There was no room at all on their improvised balcony, so they rotated slowly on the spot, their cheeks pressed gently together. Give me your love, Vera crooned, and I can make the most impossible things come true. Collins curled his other hand around Farrier’s hip, and pulled him closer, so that Farrier too might be suffused with light. There was no question of rhythm, or step, or coordination – all that was meaningless, next to having his arms around Collins, at last, unhurried and unthreatened.
Farrier kept his eyes open – to take in the sunset and the slowly healing city, and their small corner halfway to the sky, and Collins’ face close to his. Blue shadows never, sunshine forever. Roses in December for you.