‘I’m just doing fegato alla veneziana,’ Johnny said.
‘Oh, right . . . great,’ said Ivan, looking thoughtfully at the ingredients on the table. ‘By the way, we mustn’t forget the postcards.’
‘We must send one to my auntie, obviously.’
‘Yes. And Iffy,’ said Ivan. ‘She’ll want to know about the house.’
‘And what about the girls?’ All their friends seemed to have some sort of interest in their weekend.
‘The girls definitely,’ said Ivan. ‘And I must send one to Evert.’
‘Let’s both send one, shall we?’ said Johnny.
‘Oh, OK – if you like,’ said Ivan. ‘And what about your friends? You must have friends from college?’
‘Not really,’ said Johnny.
Ivan smiled narrowly at him. ‘Bit of a lone wolf, aren’t you, Jonathan.’ He tilted his glass one way, then the other. ‘And your parents?’
‘Well, I could send one to Mum, I suppose.’
Ivan looked up almost slyly. ‘What about your dad?’
‘He’s not really a postcard person.’
‘It might be a nice surprise for him,’ said Ivan.
Johnny drew the chopped onions into a neat line on the board. ‘No, I’ll send one to Mum and Barry, they’d like that.’ Ivan had the tactical smile of someone framing a new question; but all he said in the end was, ‘I’ll write Evert’s card, anyway, shall I?’
‘OK.’ Johnny chuckled. ‘You’re quite close with old Evert, actually, aren’t you?’
Ivan turned his brown eyes and large smile on him. ‘Old Evert?’ he said, ‘Oh, I love him.’ And as he went out through the door into the main room, ‘Don’t you?’
When he came back a minute later with the cards he said, ‘I wonder what the girls are up to this weekend.’
‘Yeah, I wonder.’ They seemed far enough away to be talked about in a more exploratory light than in London.
‘Probably going to that awful club.’
‘Oh, I like it. The Solly, you mean.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Ivan, flatly, the matter of their night there just under the surface.
‘You’d think Fran and Una couldn’t stand it, from what they say about it, but they seem to go there all the time.’
Ivan laughed and said, ‘You know they want to have a baby.’
‘Really?’ Johnny stooped to light the gas, turned it up and edged it down. ‘That might be a bit difficult!’
‘There are ways, of course,’ said Ivan.
‘Adopting, you mean? – they wouldn’t be allowed, would they?’
‘No, silly, one of them would have a baby and they’d bring it up together.’
‘Two mothers.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh, OK . . . How would they . . . I mean how would it be done, physically?’
Ivan was a little obscure: ‘They don’t want to, you know, actually do it,’ he said.
‘No, right . . .’ said Johnny, at sea once again in the radical imaginings of the lesbian world. ‘So who do they want to be the father?’
‘Well, they want someone they know,’ said Ivan, and looked down rather sternly.
‘I see . . . you mean they’ve asked you?’ – Johnny laughed.
Again Ivan didn’t quite answer. ‘I wouldn’t want to do it,’ he said.
Johnny got on with moving the onions round in the hot pan – ‘Oh, I don’t know, I like small children.’
‘First I’ve heard of that, my dear,’ said Ivan. Johnny didn’t answer either, but a few minutes later, as he dropped in the soft triangles of liver and the cold blood sizzled in the oil he thought two things: that there was a great deal about him Ivan had never heard of; and that after this week, perhaps even after today, he was never going to eat meat again.
He kept this to himself, and ten minutes later was forking down his dinner in a trancelike state, both eager and reluctant. He loved meat, he loved liver in particular, and while they went on chatting he found himself sighing and smiling at the imminent drama of change. It wasn’t the taste but the intolerable meaning of food that came from slaughter that he wanted to excise from his life. The decision had been shaping inescapably for months, perhaps years, and even now he found he was keeping it, for a day or so longer, to himself. When they went to bed and Ivan snuggled up with his back to him, Johnny was happy just to lay an arm over him and hear him fall asleep. Long afterwards he turned on to his back and lay awake, his eyes reading more detail, and losing it, as the night darkened further, minute by minute, the shadowed rafters, the edge of the cupboard, the just paler stripe of the unlined curtain. The green darts of the hours on the square dial of his travel clock gleamed faintly, the luminous long hand hid the short hand for a minute at five past one, the little tick he’d heard muffled but amplified under his pillow at school for five years busied on uncomplainingly. He was excited, he turned and held Ivan again, his hard-on came and went, his hand lying, barely pressing, on the soft curved strip between his friend’s rucked-up T-shirt and the waistband of his pants. He thought there were countless things he could do nothing about – being gay, and dyslexic, and in Ivan’s eyes far too young. But this was a pure choice, it had the beauty of action, unlike the long compromise of being acted upon.
He woke again to a much brighter room, raised his head to see the clock, lay back, befuddled with late sleep and slow to understand, as the night’s advances re-occupied his mind, that the pressure against his side was Ivan, sitting up next to him. He half-turned, looked quickly at him – he was on top of the covers, dressed already, in shirt and old grey flannels, leaning on his elbow to look down at him. ‘You are a heavy sleeper,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching you.’
‘Oh have you . . .’ said Johnny, huffing the sheet over himself, turning away, but then, with a slow yawning twist of his whole body rolling back to face Ivan. He had woken up hard as usual and wasn’t sure if Ivan had noticed, or if he wanted him to notice. ‘How did I look?’
‘You must have been dreaming, you made little faces.’
‘Well I dream a lot.’ All his life he’d disliked being watched, but there was an unexpected sliver of pleasure in having been at Ivan’s mercy. ‘How long have you been up?’
‘About an hour? I’m an early riser.’ It was hard to work out the change of mood, Johnny looking up, wary but ready, into Ivan’s eyes, with their glitter of promise and habitual reserve. Ivan reached out, the back of his hand for a moment against Johnny’s cheek, fingertips tracing the line of his neck and running up, through his hair, holding him, his thumb just moving in tentative circles on the secret curve behind the ear. Johnny gasped softly, and with arms pinned under the bedclothes waited powerlessly for the kiss, not in the dark, after all, but in this thinly curtained daylight. He swallowed, closed his eyes, and felt Ivan pushing back his hair. ‘It’s amazing,’ Ivan said.
Johnny laughed softly as he opened his eyes again. Ivan seemed to marvel at his face, his head, as if he had only just seen it, or seen what he ought to have found in it long before. ‘Oh, yes?’
‘Has anyone ever told you?’
Johnny looked solemn. ‘I should get my hair cut.’
‘No, silly.’ In the new atmosphere Ivan himself hesitated. ‘You look just like your dad when your hair’s pulled back.’
‘Ah . . .’ This again. He turned his head slightly, stared past Ivan’s shoulder. ‘As far as I know, you’ve never met my dad.’
‘No, but I know what he looks like, don’t I.’
‘Yeah,’ said Johnny, ‘I suppose so,’ as if he didn’t really mind, to get dad out of the way.
Ivan slid down more comfortably next to him, shrugged into his pillow, lay just smiling, his clothed knee above the covers pressing Johnny’s naked one beneath. It was a long gaze, eyes questioning, avoiding and returning, and a doubt still in Johnny’s mind as to what the question was. ‘You poor thing . . .’ said Ivan.