There is no one in the room now so he doesn’t have to check his tears. Once again, they are not so much for this woman who has nearly arrived at the end of her days as for an imagined future his mother didn’t reach. It is not a future he wanted for his mother but he thinks this is probably how she would have ended her days had she been alive. And yet again, a decision has already been made for him: he is going to stay on in 37 Ganymede Road and look after Anne Cameron. He will clean up the place, he decides valiantly. He might not manage to make everything unfade, but he will certainly deal with the dust, dirt, stench and urine-sodden carpets on a war-footing.
One final thing about the haven he has left behind.
He had Heroin Eyes in the toilet cubicle one night. It was a brief, edgy coming together, he remembers now with a dry mouth and a tautness in his gut, an encounter slippery with saliva, semen and fears. He was so grateful for it that the next time he met him there, weeks later, he was bold enough to whisper, ‘Do you want to come back to mine?’
Gently, gently, don’t rush it, he’s a twitchy butterfly, anything sudden will make him flit. But the desire overwhelmed the caution.
Heroin Eyes hesitated; through the crack of that pause, Ritwik pushed in, ‘It’s safer than here.’ There was a desperation in him that made him play on the other man’s fears so unscrupulously.
‘OK, then. I’ll leave first. You follow me out to my car.’ Everything in hot muffled whispers.
Ritwik followed him outside, his chest in a tight knot; he would either come back to his room or run away like he did the first time. There was no telling which one it would be. He was going to have to play it very carefully.
They got into the car, a clapped out white Renault, which made a clattering racket as it moved along, and Ritwik gave him directions. His name was Matthew — he wouldn’t give his surname — and he seemed uncomfortable with this sudden intimacy that sharing an ordinary, unsexual space with a cottaging pickup had brought between them. It was somehow a more revealing and skinless interaction to negotiate.
Ritwik tried to make the odd reassuring comment — ‘Don’t worry, my neighbours are all fast asleep at this time’, ‘I very much have my own privacy’ — but they petered out in the shallows of his own unconviction. Matthew, meanwhile, drove steadily, giving away nothing except a pheromonal charge of his deep discomfort. Ritwik didn’t dare look at him sideways or in the rear view mirror in case he upset the fragile balance that had brought this beautiful stranger his way. He had been chosen: that fact alone caused an unpleasantly effervescent cocktail of euphoria and anxiety inside him. He had to keep a firm lid on the bubbles of helpless, nervous giggles trying to rise to the surface.
Once past the parking lot and the staircase, in which Matthew behaved like a jittery cat, things seemed to ease out a bit. Matthew even smiled as Ritwik drew the curtains first and then turned on the bedside lamp, twisting it to face the wall so they had only a dim, diffused refraction in which to love.
He was too tall to fit into the bed, which was also too narrow; both of them kept bumping their knees and elbows on the wall against which the bed was pushed as they moved and changed positions. They tried to make as little noise as possible and spoke in whispers, afraid that they were going to wake someone up in the adjacent rooms. At the end of it, Ritwik hoped Matthew had got out of himself and felt a little bit of what he had felt.
Afterwards, Ritwik didn’t dare ask him to stay because he was afraid his raw need for this lanky stranger would become so transparent if he spoke out the words; he would surely take fright and scuttle off. Instead, he arranged the single duvet over both of them as best as he could, draped himself around Matthew and nestled his head in the hollow of his shoulder blade and collarbone.
‘So what do you read?’ Ritwik asked after a while.
‘Math.’ The knot had loosened somewhat. There was a new languor about him; they could almost be friends talking.
‘Where are you from then?’ Ritwik immediately regretted the question: two consecutive questions after sex could only seem to be an inquisition to an Englishman.
‘Blackpool. Do you know it?’ Ritwik could feel his self-deprecating, apologetic smile as he named his hometown, as if it were a private joke he wasn’t supposed to get.
‘No, I don’t. Is it nice? Isn’t it near the sea?’
‘No, yes, in that order.’
‘Why isn’t it nice?’
‘Have you ever been to an English seaside town? They are havens of the most unimaginable tack.’
Ritwik kept quiet, then casually asked another question, hoping Matthew would not latch on to this crude strategy of extracting information by spacing out and strewing the vital questions among the innocent ones. ‘So did you do finals this year?’
Ritwik expected a stark ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, which would have made his work slightly more laborious but not impossible. Instead, Matthew, who seemed to have no idea what Ritwik was leading to, answered, ‘No, I’ll do schools next year.’
OK, second year then. I just need to find out his college.
‘Are you going home for the long vac?’
‘Yes.’ Long pause. ‘I need to. I have a summer job waiting for me.’
Why isn’t he asking any questions? Why hasn’t he even asked my name? Or what I read? He reached his hand backwards and turned the light off.
Ritwik wished he had kept a firm bolt on his mouth seconds after the next question came out but the cumulative effect of Matthew’s escape through dark alleyways, his refusal to give out normal information, his wound-up, nervy demeanour, could only have led to this. ‘So you aren’t out, are you?’
Surprisingly, Matthew appeared to be relaxed about this too. ‘No, I’m not.’ Brief but untense. He added, ‘I did join the Gay Pride march last week though. Along with all of Wadham.’
Ritwik’s mind did silent whoops of joy; the last piece of the puzzle had been handed to him on a plate. He refused to let Matthew realize this so he persisted with the outing questions. ‘You know, this could be the most supportive town to come out in.’
‘Yes. I know. But it’s my parents, you see.’
‘But parents almost always come round to their children’s point of view, don’t they? Eventually.’ What do I know about that one?
‘Yeah, but my parents are very. . very. . what can I say. . conservative.’
‘You might try testing the waters.’
‘You don’t know how old-fashioned they are. I was watching telly with them one evening and there was this shot of two blokes kissing — I forget what programme it was — and they freaked, kind of. My mother kept muttering “Disgusting, disgusting”, while my father stood up, spat on the telly and turned it off. Then they just sat there, silent and shaking, with. . disgust. I suppose.’
There was nothing to say after this. Ritwik curled himself closer around Matthew. As he drifted off, he lost the restraint not to say, ‘Stay. Please.’
Matthew remained silent and awake beside him.
The film of sweat, which joined and divided them where their skins touched, was the only indication to Ritwik how much time had elapsed between falling asleep and Matthew’s swift leap out of bed on to the floor to get hurriedly into his clothes. He didn’t even have time to assimilate this uncoupling before his eyes adjusted to the bending shape of Matthew pulling on his socks. By the time he got the words out, Matthew was at the door.
‘Wait. What’s wrong? Why don’t you stay?’ The words come out paratactic, congealed.
‘No, I’ve got to go. Goodnight.’
And he was out of the door, shutting it closed after him with not so much as a scrape or a creak.