Archive of Our Own

Paul’s voice is hesitant on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

“Paul!” says Mike, out of sheer surprise at having gotten him. He’s been impossible to reach lately. “You picked up.”

“Oh, Mike. Yeah, it’s raining up here. Spending the day inside, you know? ‘Stead of working on the farm and that.”

“Right,” says Mike. “Yeah. Well, how are you? Other than the rain.”

Paul gives him the same vague answer he’s gotten every other time he’s asked over the last few months. It’s amazing how little he knows about his brother’s life these days, outside of, Oh, I’m alright. Lots to do up here, you know.

When he tries to imagine what Paul’s days consist of, he can’t come up with a single thing. Probably he wakes up and walks the dogs — and then what? Hops on his tractor? Where does rock and rolling fit into any of this? Or has he given all that up in favour of homesteading? Mike really doesn’t know.

It’s funny to consider that his brother’s life has become perfectly baffling to him. This is true in general, since they both became these unfamiliar, real people, but it’s reached a new level in the last few months. All Mike really knows, lately, is that one day Paul was planning to marry that American girl Linda, and then the next he was calling Mike and explaining in an easy tone that the wedding was off, and would you mind telling Dad for me? Great, thanks, gotta go.

It’s like he short-circuited. After all the wedding business, he retreated completely from public life, hiding away on that farm of his, for reasons Mike could only guess at. He’d resurface in brief, unpredictable bursts whenever it was time to put out a single, but he’d consistently disappear again before Mike could chase him down.

It was impossible to follow his movements, impossible to know where to call. And then when Mike did know where Paul was, it seemed like he was answering his phone only as rarely as he could get away with.

It’s not that Mike is worried, exactly. But he figures he needs to lay eyes on his brother at some point. If he wants to keep it from becoming a question of we need to do this more often!, then he has to take matters into his own hands.

“Actually,” Mike says into the line, after a brief summary of how his wife is doing, “we’re leaving for Spain a few weeks from now. I was thinking, we should see each other before then. I could drive up around your birthday, if you’re not doing anything else. See the farm and that. Introduce myself to your horses.”

Mike is expecting Paul to laugh, at least out of politeness, but he doesn’t. Instead there’s a pronounced silence.

“You—” Paul begins. “You want to come here?”

It’s a bit jarring, how cagey his tone is. “Well, yeah. I’ve still never been up there, you know. And our, um. Just, our schedules never line up when you’re in town.” Mike scratches his nose, switches the phone to his other hand. “I haven’t seen you since before the, um… you know. Since January, I guess.”

If Paul notices his awkward way of circumventing the non-wedding, he doesn’t say anything. “God, has it been that long?” he asks instead. “January. No, yeah, that’s…” He sighs. “Yeah, of course you should come. Sorry, yeah. We’ll— um. The week of my birthday’s good.”

They agree on a plan for Mike to drive up on June 16th. Paul asks if Angela doesn’t want to come, and Mike explains that it’s going to be a busy time for her at work. After that, it’s a fairly quick process to hammer out the logistics; they exchange goodbyes within a few minutes.

But just as Mike is hanging up, Paul’s voice comes through again, tinny with the phone’s distance from Mike’s ear.

“Mike?” he says, a bolt of urgency in his tone. “Listen, before you come, I think you should know…”

Mike’s frozen where he stands, hand tense around the phone. “Yeah?” he says, prompting.

“Uh, just… Don’t take the ferry, it’s shit. Faster to drive up and around the inlet.”

*

Although Paul always liked to muck about in the woods when they were kids, Mike never knew that meant he would become the kind of person who’d want to live in nature. It strikes him as odd that he wouldn’t have known that about his brother. But, in truth, he didn’t think much about what kind of adult Paul would become at all. He was always just Mike’s brother, who at least claimed to know more things than he did, and was therefore always just slightly inscrutable, unknowable.

When Mike drives up, it takes more than 12 hours, after various stops for petrol, food, and navigation. The last hour or so is just his own two headlights on dark, poorly-signalled country roads, barely any landmarks to cross-reference with his map. And so it comes as a relief when he starts passing a succession of increasingly stern ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ signs.

He’s tired, and growing hungry again after his light supper. And this is his brother’s property now, apparently. There’s something comforting in that fact. He’s made it to safety, even if he’s never been here before.

He guesses at where he’s meant to park. Paul promised to have food waiting for him when he arrived, and as he gets out of his car, Mike wonders what he’ll have made. He knocks on the front door and takes a few steps back, feeling distantly awkward at his unfamiliarity with Paul’s space.

When the door swings open, John stands there with a warm, slightly-tired smile, long hair tucked behind one ear. “Michael!” he says, pleased to see him. “Come in, we were just about to heat everything up.”

*

John does not offer any explanation as to why he’s there, nor does he address the odd coincidence of his visit happening to line up with Mike’s. He only leads Mike through the house with an air of relaxed confidence, almost proprietary, informing him that he can throw his bag on the sofa, if he wants.

Paul is at the stove when they make it to the kitchen, stirring some kind of stew around in a pot. John walks ahead of Mike, and says, “Look who it is!” in a way that makes him feel a bit like a prize pony.

Paul looks over his shoulder, and a wide grin stretches over his face. “Mike!” he says, and he turns around properly, pulling him into a hug with a ladle in one hand. “God, how are you? How was the drive?”

“It was fine, bit dark at the end. Got lost at one point, but I stopped at an inn and they pointed me in the right direction. Was an older couple, wife grabbed my map and drew the route herself.”

“Must’ve been the Andersons,” Paul says, looking over at John, who nods with a knowing smile.

“Maybe,” Mike says. “Uh, I didn’t get their names, actually. But it was a nice little town. It’s a nice place, this, what I could see of it in the dark.”

“Oh, thanks,” Paul says. “Here, I’ll show you round the house, if you want. John, do you mind?”

“Sure,” John says, and trades places with Paul at the stove. He places a hand on Paul’s waist when they pass each other, but Paul doesn’t particularly seem to notice it.

He leads Mike to a set of stairs, at the top of which he stoops to pet a watchful brown-eared cat. “Who’s this?” Mike asks, to which Paul replies, “Oh, that’s Mimi,” offering no further explanation.

He starts off by showing Mike the two guest bedrooms, neither of which seem to be in use as yet. Then, at the end of the hall: “Bathroom on the right, and this is, um…”

He hesitates for a second, which makes Mike look over. But he just shakes his head, as if to clear it. “You know. The master bedroom.”

Paul opens the door so Mike can have a look inside. There are two dark wood nightstands on either side of the bed, each with a different book set on top. He notices a dressing gown draped over an armchair, and then another hanging inside the half-open closet door. There’s a black ink drawing tucked into the corner of the mirror, a doodle of two faces, in a style Mike’s sure he recognizes.

“Nice,” he says. “Looks cosy.”

“Yeah,” Paul says, “We— There’s some decorations in London, still. But they’ll come up eventually.”

He makes it sound like he intends for his things to march themselves up the countryside of their own accord. It’s not like anyone in particular is going to bring them.

Mike follows Paul to the music room, then downstairs around various sitting rooms, not sure what to think. When he offers to help set the table, John says, “No, it’s fine” — somewhat presumptuously, it seems to Mike. “You’re the guest.”

They sit down to eat, and Mike shares a few more stories from the drive, tells them about his plans to visit Spain. Paul apologises for how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other. “It’s just been a bit of a mad time,” he says, and though Mike brushes it off, it leads them swiftly off a conversational cliff.

There’s a space where Paul could offer more information. But he doesn’t.

Mike clears his throat in the silence. “So, uh.”

Is this not something they should’ve explained by now? Is this really a very strange question to have?

“Um. What are you doing up here, John?”

He seems at first to be confused by the question. But then something shifts in his eyes, and he sets down his fork, turning, a bit accusingly, toward Paul, who instantly cuts in, “Oh, John’s just visiting, too, actually. Sorry, forgot to mention.”

John keeps on staring at Paul for a long second. Mike gazes into his food.

When the silence gets too painful to bear, he finally remembers to say, “That’s great.” It comes out terribly strained.

“Yeah,” John says, a bit weakly. He rakes his fingers through his hair. “Always great to visit a friend.”

If Mike wasn’t positive what this was before, he is now.

*

John is mostly silent through the rest of their meal, and then he marches upstairs the moment they finish. Mike feels bad for him, if he’s perfectly honest.

Paul doesn’t acknowledge it, but only sets to work on the washing up, accepting Mike’s help with drying the dishes. They work in silence, Mike towelling everything off with perhaps more care than is necessary. What’s abundantly clear to him is that they will not spend the next four days in some kind of fucked up charade of mutual ignorance, no matter how much Paul would love that.

“So,” he says uncertainly, and clears his throat. “Um. You and John.”

Paul doesn’t say anything, just goes on rinsing off the plate in his hands — but then, it’s not the kind of statement that unequivocally demands a response.

Mike decides to try again. “When did he come up?” he asks. Paul will never tell him the whole story if he acts like he’s already put it together. He doesn’t like feeling caught out; better to give him a chance, however artificial, to introduce the idea the way he wants.

Still he gets no response. Paul stares out the kitchen window, as if seeing something very interesting in the pitch black. It’s like he hasn’t heard Mike at all.

Mike sighs. “What room is he staying in?” he asks. “So I can take the other one.”

They haven’t quite finished with the dishes yet, but Paul starts washing his hands. Jesus Christ, Mike thinks. Surely Paul’s grown out of this. Surely he’s not about to walk out of the fucking room.

As Paul dries his hands on a spare dishrag, Mike can feel himself seize up with rage. He is instantly, incandescently angry, the kind of outsize response that is only possible between siblings. He can hardly fucking believe this person. If they were eight years old, he would throw the spoon he holds at Paul’s head, possibly knock him to the floor.

Paul starts walking away and Mike says, “The fuck is your problem?” to his retreating back, hating how pathetic he feels. “Stop fucking ignoring me.”

Paul gives no sign at all that anyone’s spoken to him, other than his deceivingly jaunty, but nonetheless quite brisk gait on the stairs.

Mike stands in Paul’s kitchen, hands clenched by his sides, in complete disbelief at what just happened. He could march outside and walk home. When he manages to remember what he’s doing, he washes his hands and heads up to sleep. Let Paul do the dishes himself, he thinks, soon as he’s done being a prick.

Funnily enough, it’s not the first time in his life he’s had that thought.

*

Mike’s body wakes him up at the same time as ever, despite his late night. He can hear someone moving about downstairs, Paul talking to one of the pets in a funny voice. He lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling, just listening to it.

He’s embarrassed by how upset he got last night, and angry with Paul for trying to hide what was going on. He doesn’t want to go downstairs and be lied to, or be reminded of how much cleverer and more collected Paul thinks he is. But he’d also feel stupid avoiding him, hiding out in bed with no particular solution in mind.

Anyway, he finds it’s not as bad as all that, when he does go downstairs. Paul smiles on seeing him. “Morning,” he says. “I’m making eggs and sausages, they’re almost ready. There’s tea if you want it, as well.”

“Great,” says Mike. “Can I help with anything?”

It’s not that they’re pretending it never happened. They’re just choosing to move on.

About ten minutes into their meal, Paul is talking about what they might get up to that day, when they start hearing John’s footsteps from upstairs. He comes down a few minutes later, wearing the dressing gown Mike noticed yesterday, cheek still creased with his pillow. “Mike,” he says when he sees him. “Sleep well?”

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks.”

John nods in acknowledgement, stifling a yawn. Him and Paul have seemingly agreed to stop insulting Mike’s intelligence at some point in the night, because when he walks up to Paul’s chair, he plants a tender kiss right on his lips, chaste but lingering. “Morning,” he says gently.

“Morning,” says Paul, tracing the pillow-crease on John’s cheek. “Food’s on the stove. Should still be warm.”

John goes off to serve himself. Paul pretends not to glance nervously at Mike, shoving his food around with his fork. “Eggs are from our own hens, you know.”

As they eat, Paul gives Mike what he now realises to be a more complete picture of his life, compared to the version he got yesterday. “We brought all the essentials with us that first time,” he says, “so we’ve just been bringing up whatever fits in the back seat, last few times we drove down. Actually, we’re due back in London soon, for the next album. Middle of July, or so.” He slices off a bite of sausage, brings it to his mouth. “Um. And John’s son’ll be on holiday in a few weeks, so he might come up.”

John laughs, drily, around a sip of tea, half-choking on it. “Christ.”

“We’re considering it,” Paul amends.

“What he means by that, Mike, is that he’s brought it up exactly once, and I said I’d rather—”

“It’s a possibility. We don’t know yet, really, haven’t made a decision.”

“‘We,’” echoes John. “You seemed pretty confident a minute ago.”

Mike stares into the wood grain of the table, trying very hard to dissolve into his chair. Paul gives John a look, but otherwise ignores his outburst.

Undaunted by the silence, John continues, “So, will you tell Cynthia then? And anyway, what makes you think Jules will want to come? I mean, can you imagine? Mummy kicks Daddy out, and then within the year he’s—”

“Like I said,” Paul interrupts, very deliberately facing Mike. “We’re thinking about it,” he says, beaming a slightly terrifying smile of placidity at him.

For whatever reason, it hits him anew that, although Paul will always be his older brother, they are, for all practical purposes, the same age. “Yeah,” Mike says, in a tone of superhuman neutrality. “‘Course.”

*

After breakfast Paul takes Mike on a walk through the woods behind the farm, while John stays behind, presumably seething up in the room he shares with Mike’s brother. Despite his temper, though, he has lunch ready when Paul and Mike get home, and they all eat together, once again choosing to move on by silent agreement.

God, thinks Mike. Is this what it’s always like?

Still tired from his late drive and his early morning, he heads upstairs for a nap when they’re finished, and this seems to give John and Paul the opportunity they were waiting for. When he wakes up, after about twenty minutes, he can hear them speaking in pointed tones from somewhere in the house — though he doesn’t care to decipher what they’re saying.

He considers going back to sleep. Instead, he heads downstairs, walking as noisily as possible.

But it’s not noise enough, apparently, because John is in the middle of a sentence when he finds them in the sunroom. “You can’t—” he’s saying, and then he falls silent, drawing a deep sigh.

The interruption makes Paul look over to where Mike stands, frozen, in the threshold of the room.

They both just look at him for a second, neither of them saying anything. Paul sits by the window, in a chair facing out to a wide expanse of grass, while John is on his feet, pacing.

Mike can feel the twinging stretch of the silence. He takes a breath to explain himself. And just then a dog starts barking wildly somewhere outdoors.

Everyone in the room seems to catch himself, reset. In a cool tone of voice, Paul says, “That’ll be Martha. She’s tied up outside, probably saw a squirrel or something.”

There’s a complicated sort of pause. John sighs, and then says, “Here,” voice dripping with reluctance. “I’ll just go take responsibility, shall I?”

He trudges past Mike. “‘Less you want to do it, Paul. Do a better job than me, I’m sure.”

There’s silence as he walks away. Mike sits in a chair next to Paul, who gives him an awkward, apologetic smile. He makes a noncommittal gesture in response.

Mike was always quicker to lash out than Paul was, never feeling the same need to hide his anger. He can empathise with John as far as that goes. But he still feels an instinctive revulsion, not at the show of emotion, but at how unashamed John is of his dirty laundry. There are certain things you don’t air out in front of company; it simply isn’t done. Keeping personal issues private is a way of showing respect and caring — especially within a couple, if that’s what John and Paul are.

It sets him on edge to see John acting this way, hits close to home. He’s like a little boy, throwing a tantrum where anyone can see.

At the louder-than-necessary sound of his indignant footsteps, Mike can’t help but think: Of everybody in the world, why this person?

They can hear the kitchen door open from the sunroom. The door closes, and Martha stops barking, but John doesn’t come back inside. A minute passes, and then the sound of his voice comes, distantly: “C’mon, girl. I can’t throw it for you if you don't give it back.”

Paul chews on the side of his cheek. “Sorry about all that,” he says, tacking on a weak little laugh. How silly we are.

Mike laughs along automatically, but he’s still crawling with discomfort, and derision.

For a long time, Paul was very much in charge of his life. He was only 18 months older — less than the difference between him and John — but, at a very young age, he’d been given the right to tell Mike what to do. And he continued to exercise this supposed right as Mike came of age: there came a point where Mike often knew exactly the right choice to make for himself, but Paul never seemed to agree. Altogether, this could only lead him to the conclusion that in truth Paul was a bit of an idiot sometimes.

It’s not a matter of pride. It’s only that they had the exact same life for 15 years, give or take; Mike doesn’t understand how they can be such different people. Sometimes he’d like to wrest the wheel from his brother’s hands, steer him toward what seems very obviously to be the best course.

Mike knows intellectually that it’s none of his business, the friction between his brother and John. Still, somehow, it feels so unbearably personal.

“Do you—” he begins, wary of setting off Paul’s know-it-all defensiveness. “D’you actually, sort of… Know what you’re doing?”

Paul glares. “Mike.”

“I mean, I know it’s fraught, there’s emotions involved, but have you actually, objectively—”

“We’re not talking about this.”

“It’s just, your lives need to be compatible too, y’know.”

“Well it’s my life, isn’t it? What would you know about it?”

“Take the thing with his son, I mean. What’s he gonna do up here, if he does come?”

“I dunno! Ride horses, build forts in the woods. Be a kid! Be with his dad, for Christ’s sake.”

Mike sits forward in his chair. “Paul, don’t pretend you’re— This isn’t about fixing John’s relationship with his son. You always wanted to be a dad.”

“And if John’s a part of Julian’s life again, then…”

“You can’t want to fix their relationship just so you get a chance to be a parent. That kid, he’s a real person, not just your ticket to — I dunno — some fantasy you have. Domestic bliss.”

“It’s not like that. I care about Julian, I’ve watched him grow up. He’s John’s son, of course I care about him.”

“That’s all fine, Paul, but it’s like you said: that’s John’s son. They need to have their own relationship independently, before you introduce someone else into the mix.”

Paul shakes his head, elaborately confused. “I don’t see what the difference is.”

“It’ll never work, if you both try and step in at the same time. John’ll see you getting close, and it’ll only make him insecure, push him and Julian further apart. It wouldn’t be fair — to John or Julian.”

“Well, maybe,” Paul says, chewing on his lip. “Or it could, sort of... Encourage him. If me and Jules can get along, why not John, too?”

Mike is momentarily speechless. It sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. He’s never known John to respond well when he feels inferior. And that might not even matter, anyway; from what Mike’s seen of him, he doubts John will even want to be part of Julian’s life in the first place.

But he doesn’t say any of this. Part of him suspects Paul already knows.

He sighs, and decides it’s enough to leave the flaws with Paul’s dream scenario hanging in the air.

“Listen,” Mike begins. “It’s like I said before: your lives need to be compatible, just as much as your personalities and that. The relationship between John and Julian might never be what you want it to be. You’ll never have any kids of your own, you and him. So it’s sort of: what is it you’re doing, up here? Dropping everything else, for something that might not even make you happy, in the end.”

Paul’s expression twists with something like disgust. “It’s only been a few months,” he says. “I don’t see why you’re worrying about kids and that.” His leg starts bouncing, and he picks at the skin around his fingernails. “I mean, you know. If it was a bird I was seeing, you wouldn’t be talking about kids, not this soon.”

The implication stings briefly, but Mike’s head is moving so fast that all he thinks to say is, “That’s not what it is,” before barrelling on. “I mention kids because you’re trying to get Jules to visit, and it seems like what you really want is to settle down, be his dad. But that’s just a part of it. What happens when the media finds out? What does this mean for the band?” Beside him, Paul is looking out at the field in front of them with his ‘I don’t want to hear this’ expression on. “All I’m saying is: you need to ask yourself if maybe this thing with John doesn’t make any sense. I mean, that is a possibility, right? Maybe there’s just not a way to make it work.”

Paul’s gone away fully now, retreated deep into himself. He doesn’t respond, but only stares blankly out the window.

For some reason — something odd in the tinge of the moment — it makes sympathy pulse hot inside Mike’s chest.

Paul’s eyes are wide and vacant, a bit like when their dad would tell him off for staying out too late. Mike feels himself lose steam completely.

He sighs. “You should think about it, anyway,” he concludes. “I know how much you want this…”

There’s still no obvious reaction on Paul’s face. But the words make his expression soften, caving in on itself like rotting fruit.

He stares hard at his fingers. Swallows with some difficulty. “There has to be a way,” Paul says. It sounds like something he’s told himself before.

Mike doesn’t say anything in response. He watches his brother pick at his fingernails.

Paul takes a nervous breath. “Don’t you think?” he asks.

And, for all Mike’s ranting and raving, it comes as a surprise that Paul actually cares about his opinions. He’s genuinely asking if Mike doesn’t see a way for him to get what he wants.

Mike looks down at his lap. Paul never listens to him about this kind of thing. It’s like talking to a brick wall, with him: you could throw anything his way, and it would just bounce right back. Some of the time, Mike is guilty of sincerely believing this.

Between Paul’s air of impervious coolness, and Mike’s preoccupation with the subtleties of step-parenting, he never stopped to listen to himself. Never considered what it would’ve been like for a normal person, coming up against so much disapproval. It was so hard for Paul to admit he was with a man at all.

Another pulse of sympathy flashes through his chest. It occurs to him, suddenly, that Paul really wants him to be on his side. Paul needs him.

There’s a cold feeling in his stomach. But he says, “I dunno. Maybe. It just seems tricky.”

Beside him, Paul seems to be choosing his words carefully. “You know,” he begins, “I’ve tried settling down with someone else. With a bird, I mean. It’s not like that was some great success either. Nothing says that has to work any more than this does, just because it’s — you know — what we were raised with.” He looks over at Mike, then back toward the window. “At least with John, I know it’s actually what I want.”

Mike traces the upholstered trim on his armchair. “Even if you might not end up having a family?”

Paul shrugs. “I have a family. You know?”

Mike feels a flicker of warmth at that. But he rolls his eyes, which makes Paul laugh lightly. “Yeah,” he responds. “Guess you do.”

They’re silent for a moment. Mike scratches the back of his head. “Um,” he begins. It takes some effort to push through the vertigo of discussing this out loud. “Just, you know. I am alright with it. You and John, I mean.” He stares hard at the fabric of his armchair. “I should’ve said that before.”

When he looks up, Paul is still staring out the window, giving no outward sign that he’s heard what Mike said — or that it means anything to him, if he did. But you can’t always tell, with him.

“I’ve got nothing against him, John,” Mike continues. “As long as he doesn’t frame me for stealing any more of Dad’s whiskey, that is.”

*

Mike makes them all tea while Paul steps out to finish his conversation with John — which takes long enough that he’s nearly drained his cup by the time they come back in. But, if it was a lengthy discussion, they’ve at least settled things enough to be polite when they speak to each other, both casually sipping their tea as they talk over logistics for the day trip they’ve planned.

Before long, they’re all standing around Paul’s little hatchback, debating strategies for lifting a moderately-sized rowboat up onto its roof. In the end, Mike and John stand on one side of the boat, with Paul on the other, and they shuffle it along from the back of the car forwards. Except it ends up too far toward Paul’s side, so they have to nudge it over, but then it sits sort of diagonally, and so Mike is given the task of telling Paul and John when it’s lined up properly.

“Uh,” he says from in front of the hood. “The front end needs to come in more. But the whole thing’s still too far to the left, I think. My left,” he clarifies, when Paul and John start going the wrong way.

In a funny voice, deep and over-loud, John says, “Over towards me, then, Frank.”

“That’s right, Leonard,” says Paul, also in a voice. “Over towards you. And you’ll want to shimmy it a bit, too, it sounds like.”

“Too right, I’ll want to shimmy it,” says John, and he shakes his shoulders back and forth even though Paul can’t see him.

Mike ignores them. Frank? he thinks. Leonard?

The boat is still slightly crooked when they’re finished, but Mike doesn’t have the heart to tell them. “Do we know how we’re going to tie it to the rack?”

It’s another fifteen minutes before they’re pulling out of Paul’s drive, but between Paul and John’s funny voices, and Mike’s inventive knot-tying methods, no one takes it all that seriously. Mike sits in the back, oars at his feet, with Martha perched next to him and Eddie on his lap.

They take the road he drove in on, but as it’s his first time seeing it in the light of day, he peers curiously out his window, assessing the landscape. Those are his brother’s pine trees; that must be his empty horse paddock. All those ‘private property’ signs, the weathered garden shed. The life he’s made for himself — how elaborate, how funny.

He decides it’s as good a time as any to pin down the question of what exactly Paul does all day, when he’s up here.

“Well, it’s a lot of work, the farm,” Paul explains. “Usually walk the dogs in the morning, feed the animals. There’s a lot of repairs we still want to do, as well.” As he talks, John curls his fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, studying his features. “You have to sort of think of the future up here, more than you do in the city, I mean. So we’re planting things now that we’ll want later. Harvesting whatever’s in season.” He looks at Mike through the rearview mirror. “It’s a full time job, gardening.”

He says it with a bit of exaggerated bravado, which makes Mike smile along. “What about you, John? Helping out and that?”

John shrugs. “Here and there. More of a bored housewife, really.” He turns back to look at Mike over his outstretched arm, playfully secretive. “Might run away with the gardener.”

Mike laughs, and Paul smiles, looking at John from the corner of his eye. He takes John’s hand from his hair, and laces their fingers together, bringing them to rest on his thigh. He squeezes John’s palm once, runs his thumb gently over his skin. Mike looks out the window again as the conversation fades.

It really doesn’t bother him, his brother being with a man, but it does take some getting used to. Mainly, what he feels reminds him of the first few times Paul brought a girl round to Forthlin Road. He remembers noticing Paul wrap an arm over her shoulders at some family party, remembers his sense of alarm when they disappeared together halfway through the evening. He knew there was nothing wrong with it; it was just new, and closer to him than it ever had been, in his brother.

After an hour’s drive, they park on the side of a bare, dusty road, untying the rowboat and carrying it some distance to the stony shores of a sweet little loch, gallantly guided by Martha and Eddie. Everybody piles in, and they row out to the middle of the water, bringing their oars in and passing around a joint.

Although it’s uncommonly warm for the area, the water’s still cold enough that only Paul has any interest in swimming. He wades in when they row back to shore, but Mike and John hang back to keep an eye on the dogs, each cracking open a beer from the cooler they left in the car.

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, stretched out on the grass and contemplating the hills rising up around them. John sighs, in what Mike interprets as contentment.

Then he says: “Well, I don’t see Paul explaining any of this. And if you ask him directly, he’ll only do that ‘hear no evil’ trick of his. So, here.”

What follows is a mostly-chronological, mostly-unembellished list of events. John tells him everything, from the beginning of him and Paul’s relationship up ‘till now, in a very matter of fact way. Almost assertive, as if he were daring Mike to be thrown by it.

He remembers the secret joy Paul used to get from having John tear into people he didn’t like. How he’d sometimes rattle off a treatise on someone’s unfavourable qualities, as if coaxing John to bully them for him. He wonders if that’s a bit like what’s happening now.

“So then,” John’s saying, “all of a sudden he’s engaged, and all of a sudden I’m wondering if I should get married too, and we’re all, what’s happening here? You know, What are we doing? We were embarrassing ourselves, in a way. And we were only going to keep embarrassing ourselves unless we tried this.”

Johns spends a second thinking. “I’m sure I would’ve been happy with Yoko,” he continues. “But I wouldn’t have been able to, sort of, set the whole thing with me and him aside. Let him go. So…” He shrugs. “We’re trying this.”

John takes a pull from his beer, then rests the bottle in his lap, peeling the label from the side. “Obviously it’s sort of an insane thing to do,” he continues. “I think we both know that. But we have to try, right?”

Mike doesn’t have the kind of relationship with John where he can quibble with his ideas much. But, either way, although he doesn’t necessarily get where John and Paul are coming from, it’s oddly reassuring to hear they at least know what they’re doing is crazy. Better than denying the risks, rushing into things with foolhardy optimism.

Mike chews pensively on his fingers, then catches himself, and stops. “Does anyone else know?” he asks.

John makes a face around a swallow of beer. Good question. “Some people’ve put it together, I think. We’ve sort of let them — the people we trust, anyway. But, actually, I was trying to convince him to start being more upfront about it, round the time you called. So, as it happens, you’re the first person we’ve actually told,” he says. Then he tenses, and amends, “Or, or, I mean—”

Mike smiles; neither John nor Paul ever actually told him, in so many words. “No, yeah, I know what you mean.”

Out in the water, Paul dives deep below the surface, presumably to swim along the bottom of the loch. Mike takes a sip from his beer, mostly as an excuse not to say anything for a minute. He cannot begin to understand how Paul’s head works.

Beside him, John has no way of knowing how absurdly touched Mike is. Continuing with his chronology, he says, “You know, it was all Paul’s idea.” A smile twitches on his features. “I thought he was joking at first. We’d stayed up late, and I was talking about Yoko, ‘bout how we might get married too. And he just gets this mad look in his eye. We talk more, and he just goes, ‘How about it, Johnny?’ Easy as anything, you know how he is. ‘Don’t marry that girl. Marry me instead.’”

Mike’s stomach sinks. Marry? he thinks with some dread.

It must show on his face, because John says, “Relax. That’s not what this is.” He repositions on the grass. “We’re just trying to find a way, I suppose.”

Mike nods, sips from his beer. Conscious of the conversation he had with Paul three hours ago, he says, “It’s a bit tricky, I imagine.”

He can practically see John’s hackles rise. “Well, yeah,” he says brusquely. “Obviously, it’s tricky.”

Mike feels that old curl of revulsion again. John and his tantrums. He looks aside to where Eddie is resting in the sun.

Before his contempt can build too much, though, John speaks again. “Or, look, it’s just…” He huffs out a sigh. “I’m not just doing this for a lark, you know. I realise it’s complicated, but I’m honestly trying to make it work.” He glares at Mike from the corner of his eye. “There’s no one else for me but him,” he says. “The last thing I want is to hurt him.”

Mike looks down at his lap, a little embarrassed. He didn’t realise that’s what he’s been worried about all along.

It’s one of those funny moments where he discovers he’s stumbled quite accidentally into a role millions of others have played before him. Listen here, young man. It actually does happen in real life.

Before he can deliver any crude threats of violence, though, Paul comes splashing out of the water toward them. “Alright there, you two?”

He picks up his towel, dries off his hair. John looks at him in a way that, for all their sakes, Mike pretends very hard not to have seen.

*

The next day is Paul’s birthday. John takes care of all the morning chores — though when Mike offers to take the dogs out, he accepts, and heads back upstairs to “try and sleep some more.” Mike extends his walk as long as possible, and makes a lot of noise on coming back inside.

He finds Paul perched in the window of the sitting room, hair damp from the shower, with a mug of tea clutched in his hands. Mike pads over to his spot. “Happy birth-dayy,” he sings by way of greeting.

Paul smiles through a yawn. “Mm, thanks. Another year wiser.”

“Yeah, you’d think, wouldn’t you?” Mike says, just for the sake of it. He sits down next to Paul. “Where’s John?”

Paul smiles, expression radiant with affection. “He fell back asleep,” he says, in a tone like it was a very remarkable thing for a person to do.

Mike resists the urge to roll his eyes. “Right,” he says.

They’re silent for a moment. Paul sits nursing his tea, feet curled up by his hips. Mike stares out at the landscape in the window.

He can tell, instinctively, when Paul starts gearing up to say something. Somewhere, he recognises the body language. He knows what Paul’s about to ask him.

“Um. Listen…” Paul begins. He takes a few steadying breaths. “I’ll tell Dad at some point. About me and John, I mean. It’s not like I won’t.”

Don’t tell Dad, is what Mike hears; he’s heard it before a million times.

He smiles gently. “‘Course,” he says.

Paul nods, dropping his gaze to his tea.

He chews on his cheek for a second. “I know this doesn’t make any sense to you,” Paul says. There’s a space where Mike could answer, but he doesn’t.

“To be honest,” Paul continues, “it doesn’t make any sense to me either. I mean, I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you why this happened, with us. I just wanted to join his rock ‘n’ roll group,” he says, with a thin little laugh. “I couldn’t have predicted he would…”

But whatever John does for him, it seems too difficult to say aloud. Paul takes a deep breath, clears his throat, before continuing. “You know, we’d been having some trouble with songwriting, earlier this year. But when he first came up here…” He shakes his head. “I mean, you should’ve seen us. We couldn’t stop writing. Staying up ‘till 4 AM, guitars in the kitchen while we cooked. Every time we sat down — we never once came up dry.” The end of the sentence grows weak as he speaks.

Mike looks down at his lap. Sometimes it can be hard to offer his brother the amount of empathy he deserves. In Mike’s head, he’s always just a brother — a very stupid thing to be, in his opinion. But from the way Paul’s speaking, half as if Mike wasn’t even there, he can tell this is something he desperately wants to think through properly. Who else does he have to talk about it with? Mike does his best to extend him a bit more understanding than he’s used to. Tries to listen the way he would if it was anybody else.

“Writing like that…” Paul says, once he’s gathered his wits again. “It was like travelling back to when we first met. Or, it was better than that. It was like meeting him — I mean, meeting him — all over again.”

The room’s fallen away completely, now, in Paul’s head; Mike can tell, and doesn’t mind. It’s rare to get a glimpse like this into what he’s thinking.

Paul sighs before continuing. “That time you visited us in January… well, you saw how it was. I could write — I mean, I could get words on the page — but I couldn’t… it wasn’t like I needed to. It was terrifying. The only songs I had that were any good were about losing him.

“And I was afraid I’d never know what it felt like again. You know, just. Inspiration. That feeling like it’s a clear day, and you can just see everything: the whole world, and every half-formed idea you could ever shape into something to share with it. I thought I’d run out of that, and I was horrified.” His hands fidget with his mug. “I missed it.

“Then we both blow our lives up, and it’s like the dam’s burst open. Everything’s so clear now. I wake up to music in my head.” His mouth twitches into a smile. “And I think… You know, I think this is what it’s supposed to be like. I can’t just give it up. If I did, I’d have to spend my whole life pretending I didn’t already know…”

He cuts himself off mid-sentence, looking up at Mike, then back down.

“You probably think I’m just being, sort of, idealistic. Thinking romantically. But I’m not. It was a real change, when we got together — something you can’t ignore, you know. I couldn’t believe it, those first few weeks. The appetite for life I had. I had things I wanted to say, and I knew what they were.” His voice grows thready again toward the end of his sentence. He shrugs, as if to cover it up. “And I can’t explain it. I never could; that was part of the fun. The mystery in between us.”

He finally straightens in his seat, takes up his tea again. “So maybe it’s not the wisest thing I’ve ever done, moving up here with him. But it’s what I want. ”

Mike stares out the window. It’s a little mad, seeing it all laid out like that. Jesus; his brother is completely gone.

He’s still not completely convinced it won’t end in disaster. But it’s possible he just needs to let go of the delusion that he understands the inner workings of his brother’s life. He remembers thinking that Paul’s bright future was ruined when he failed his A level in Art. Maybe this will work out too.

Mike sighs. “Look,” he begins. “I don’t mean to seem so disapproving. I can tell you’re happy together. So that’s all that… you know. And I love you no matter what, obviously.”

He stands up as soon as it’s out of his mouth, unbearably restless. Maybe he’ll go make himself some tea.

“I’m sure you’ll make it work,” he concludes. “Stubborn as you are.”

*

Mike’s birthday gift for Paul, which he gives him when they all gather in the sitting room after supper, is a copy of a novelty jazz record from their childhood. They used to listen to it unquestioningly, as kids, only realising how profoundly strange it was when they got older, and found, to their immense chagrin, that it had gone missing in the move from Forthlin out to Heswall.

Mike was astonished to find it in a box at an antiques shop recently, and Paul is astonished when he opens it. “God,” he says, turning it over in his hands “I was starting to think we’d made it up.” He passes the record to John so he can look at the cover. “It’s supposed to be, sort of, songs for kids, you know. But in a way it was— It’s too much.”

Mike smiles. “Proto-psychedelic,” he agrees.

They put it on while they all finish their drinks. It’s a laugh at first; but, before long, John and Paul grow serious, unpacking the record’s musical merits, debating whether the string arrangement is amateurish or stylised. On the record Mike bought, from his childhood with Paul. He smiles to himself, leaning back in his chair to watch John and Paul’s heated discussion on the settee. It’s not something he’s unused to.

John’s gift, which he fetches from somewhere upstairs, comes in three parts. Being the most difficult to conceal, the first one he hands over is an unwrapped painting of the farm by night.

Mike can only see it from a sharp, sideways angle, but he gets the gist. The farm sits nestled at the bottom of several quiet hills, much taller than they are in real life, with a vast, starry sky draped overhead. The picture is done in all dark colours — deep blues, muddy greens — except for the windows of the house, which glow a vivid hot pink, and the technicolour swirls emanating from the chimney.

After this, John gives Paul his birthday “card” — which consists of three or four pages of stationery stuffed into an envelope. (“Don’t read it now!” John says).

The final part of his gift looks to Mike like a generic greeting card, of the kind you might pick up last-minute. But it seems to have more meaning than that to Paul, whose expression freezes when he scans the cover. All Mike sees is a lot of powder blue. Paul hesitates, blinking, before opening it.

The card turns out to be a large sheet of paper folded into four, so that when Paul opens it to see the unprinted side, Mike recognises the side facing him as a Valentine. Paul stares down at it, lost for words. “Is this…” he begins. “The, um. From the plane?”

Sitting next to Paul, John tucks his hair behind one ear, nervous. “Yeah. Nicked it from EMI last time we were down.”

Paul flips the paper over to the printed side and back, as if he can hardly believe what he’s seeing. In the motion, Mike catches sight of what looks like handwriting on the blank side.

Several beats pass. John fidgets in the silence. “Well, I thought it was applicable, you know. ‘Our new love,’ and that. Um, and it was meant for you, the song, so I thought you might as well have this.”

Paul looks up, then, smiling at John’s display of breeziness. And Mike has hardly ever seen that look in his eye: soft, and amazed, and brimming with laughter. “I love it,” Paul says, and leans over for a kiss. “Thank you.”

John gives a weak little smile. “Happy birthday,” he says. “I love you.”

“Love you,” says Paul.

*

Mike makes the next round of drinks, and then John, who has always had a slightly generous hand, and soon enough Paul starts bullying Mike into playing them a song on the room’s upright piano.

Mike groans. “I don’t know any,” he protests, not with very high hopes.

“Michael,” says Paul. “You’re being rude. Go on, I know you know something.”

“I haven’t touched a piano since our church choir years,” Mike says. “Not much more than the fallboard, anyway.”

But Paul insists, and so Mike rolls his eyes, and sits down at the bench. Thinking for a second, he positions his hands uncertainly on the keys, and plays the opening chords to “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me,” which earns him an irritated sound from Paul.

Mike smirks, and transitions to a stumbling rendition of “I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket,” bowing deeply when he finishes, before ceding the piano to Paul while John grabs their guitars.

They cycle through all the big hits from when they were teenagers, Little Richard, Lonnie Donegan, Elvis. Paul and John aren’t showing off, just having fun, but still Mike finds he has trouble keeping up with them. When they launch into an Everly Brothers number, he’s happy to retreat to the sidelines.

It’s funny to think that many of the great harmonisers in musical history have been siblings: beyond the Everly Brothers, there’s the Boswell Sisters, the Andrews Sisters, the Ronettes. There’s probably something about meddling parents, in that — but it makes sense from a vocal compatibility standpoint, as well. The genetics of the thing. Your sibling is someone you can’t help but have things in common with. Might as well make the most of it for a hit record or two.

That was never in the cards for Mike and Paul, of course; though they both love music, they’ve never loved it in quite the same way. But, growing up in the house they did, it was always going to be an important part of both their lives.

The Everly Brothers recording of “Walk Right Back” finishes on a fadeout, and, with neither Paul nor John taking the initiative for a more traditional live ending, they recreate it by strumming gentler and gentler on their guitars, pinching their voices back in their throats. They get as far as whispering the lyrics before they tumble into laughter. Mike can’t help but laugh along.

When they’ve recovered, John leans away for a sip of his drink, but Paul repositions his hand on his guitar. His mouth quirks like he’s just had an idea. “Here,” he says.

It takes Mike a second to place the riff he plays as the opening to “Too Much Monkey Business” by Chuck Berry. Once he puts it together, though, he recognises immediately that Paul is playing it for his sake.

There was a time in his life where he knew every one of the tongue-twisting lyrics by heart. In fact, he’d made a point of studying them one bored summer afternoon, partially as a bid to impress his brother. He didn’t realise Paul remembered that.

As Mike sings, he’s surprised by how many of the lyrics come back to him. Still, it’s been years since he heard this song. He fudges his way through a couple verses, but soon realises it’s a pointless effort. Perhaps borrowing the vocabulary from his visits to the Beatles’ jam sessions, at the end of a chorus he says, “Take it away, Paul!”

Paul smiles, and improvises a short little solo, borrowing heavily from other Chuck Berry hits. John laughs at an eccentric flourish he throws into the last bar, and they all launch into the final chorus together.