Theo pulled out a pouch of tobacco and began rolling another joint. Dan stared up at the dark sky, the distant tremor of the stars. It felt like looking at the ceiling of the world, he thought to himself, it was so much higher here than it was in Europe. Here the stars had to exert themselves, had to struggle harder to shine their light.
Only after the first puff of the joint did Theo speak again; the nicotine and marijuana steadied his voice, pushed back the tears of rage and longing. ‘How did you realise you weren’t in love with Clyde? How did you know?’
Because I can’t see him. Because I can’t recall his eyes, his mouth, his skin, his cock, his balls, I can’t picture his stride, I can’t hear his voice, I can’t bring back the smell or even the taste of him. Because of how quickly he has gone from me.
‘Because I don’t miss him.’
‘But that’s now.’ Theo’s tone was insistent, as though Dan could tell him something that could make his pain bearable. ‘Did you realise you didn’t love him when you were with him? Do you think you ever loved him?’
Martin Taylor’s voice was a deep vibrato from the back of his throat, a man’s voice even in youth; he had a pronounced cleft in the middle of his chin — Dan could remember that clearly, how he wanted to place his finger exactly there. He could see the splash of sandy-coloured hair under Martin’s arms, wet and splayed across his fine, pale skin, skin that was flushed and pink after a swim. The stone-grey transparency of his eyes, the fixed assurance of that gaze. And Martin’s smell, a drug composed of all the boy’s emissions, heady, almost hallucinatory, the smell of his body and the smell of chlorine. In the night, Dan could smell him, he could smell Martin Taylor. He could remember everything about Martin Taylor.
‘No, I don’t think I ever loved him.’
‘Then why the fuck did you stay with him? Why the fuck would you go all the way to Scotland for him?’ Theo’s tone was unsteady again, the languid pull of the drug fighting the rage inside.
It came to Dan: she had never told him that she loved him, she’d never given him that.
‘I didn’t go to Scotland for him,’ Dan answered, as he saw it all with clarity, shocked at the severity in his voice, the ruthless calm of the truth. ‘I went for myself.’
Theo shook his head, not comprehending.
Dan sighed. Would he only ever feel the burden of words? He had spent the previous six months in virtual silence, alone in London, knowing no one, having no one. All he’d had was silence and he’d been content with that. Now he was back to the treachery of words — what to say and what to withhold, what to create and what to destroy.
What to create.
‘I had a future,’ Dan found himself saying, and he was astonished as the words began to flow: the sounds were coming out first — that was what shocked him — and then words were forming from the sounds, the words and the sentences and the meanings were originally sounds, originally breath. ‘I had a future, and I was going to be one of the greatest swimmers that ever was and I wasn’t good enough and it had nothing to do with talent or skill or my body — it had to do with who I was. I just wasn’t good enough. All I had was that future and when that future was stripped from me, there just wasn’t anything else there — and I’m sorry that even you, even all of you, all my family, you weren’t enough. There was nothing but this hole and all I was was just this hole. All I knew how to do was swim and all I wanted to do was swim and I couldn’t ever swim again, so I was just this hole where a man should be, and I hated myself for not being strong enough and not being good enough. I don’t give a fuck what everyone says about how all I could do was give it my best shot, and how not everyone can be a winner, and not everyone can achieve their dreams. That’s bullshit — without my dream, I was just a hole, an absence, that’s all I was. I failed; the failure was within me and all I knew was that I wasn’t strong enough so I was just floating. My whole life was floating and that’s what I never could bear about the water, just floating on it — what I loved about swimming was that I could fly in it, it wasn’t liquid for me, it was air. So Clyde came along and he kept me afloat and he wanted to go back to Scotland and that too kept me afloat, and Glasgow was alright, Glasgow could even be home, but I was still empty and only floating, and Clyde knew it, Clyde could see it and he began to hate me for it, because how can you love an emptiness? And then one day we were in this place called Luss, this fucking freezing loch in the Trossachs, and it was summer and the place was full of holidaying Scots having a great old time. I looked out at the water and it was calm and still and I knew it was deep enough to kill me if I wanted it to and I just stripped off my clothes and I dived in there and I swam for the first time in years, as fast as I have ever swum, and even though the water was so cold it was squeezing my lungs and my heart, I kept on swimming because I wanted to fly and because I was sick of being nothing. And then I just stopped, I just stopped swimming and the people on the shore were calling out to me and I could hear Clyde shouting for me and I just lay on my back in this icy, Arctic water, thinking, Let it fill me up, let me not be a hole, and nothing happened, nothing changed. I realised then that there was nothing left of my dream to lose, so I just turned around and headed back to the shore. People were staring at me and Clyde was drying me, going, “What were you doing, man? What the fuck were you doing?” and I was just standing there and I thought, Well, I’ve swum, and I’ve been so terrified of swimming and I’m still here and I am still empty and swimming won’t take me back to my future and my future begins now. Clyde was asking if I was alright, calling me a mad bastard, and I said to him, “I don’t want to stay here, mate, I can’t. I want to go back home,” and he said, “I cannae go back with you, Danny,” and that’s how it happens, Theo, that’s sometimes what just happens. You can’t dream the same future. I didn’t know what the future was going to be but I knew it wasn’t going to be in Glasgow and Clyde knew his wasn’t going to be here and realising that, understanding that, was more important than the question of whether I was or was not in love.’
Dan breathed in the eucalypt, the scent of wattle.
Theo was silent; he had let the joint burn down to the end, and now he flicked it across the yard.
Dan opened his mouth, but now that he had let the words loose, let them run, he could feel the old caution return. This is a story, Theo, he could have said. I’ve just told you a story. The truth he knew abounded with sound, a pulse beating to infinity, an ocean of only waves; there was too much sound to be trapped in words. Dan shut his mouth.
‘Maybe you’re searching too hard, mate.’ Theo’s voice was also wary, he too was trying to catch sound and trap it into words. ‘Maybe Clyde is enough? Maybe if you just gave it time, you’d find that being with Clyde would fill that hole? Isn’t that possible?’
Dan knew he could break his brother now, the way you squashed ants, breaking backs and souls with the press of a finger. Annalise doesn’t want you, bro, you’re not enough for her. He could crush him if he wanted to.
‘It’s not going to happen, Theo. It’s over.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m a thirty-year-old man and I’m not sure about anything. That’s the only thing I know — that I’m still not sure of anything.’
With a shudder — from the winter chill? from Dan’s words? — Theo got up. The laptop was sitting on the step. ‘You can check your emails if you like. The connection’s stuffed out here but you can log on in the kitchen.’
‘I don’t need to, thanks though.’
‘Yeah.’ Theo rolled his eyes. ‘You know you never answered one of my emails?’