Chapter 7 #2
He was. The risotto was terrible. Too thick, underseasoned, the rice still chalky in the centre despite Neil’s rescue. They ate it on the sofa with the parmesan shaved on top so thickly it almost compensated.
‘Mine’s fine,’ Rory said.
‘Yours is cement.’
‘Cement with parmesan. I’ve had worse.’
They lay on the sofa afterwards. Rory sketched while Neil read. The pencil scratched. The pages turned. Rain on the window, radiator ticking in the corner, and neither of them using the quiet to hide.
Freddie registered things before understanding them.
Neil was lighter at home, quicker to laugh, slower to correct, less rigid about the bedtime routine. One evening he let Freddie have a second biscuit without negotiation and Freddie looked at him like he'd been replaced by aliens.
‘Dad, are you feeling okay?’
‘I'm fine.’
‘You gave me a biscuit without me asking three times.’
‘I'm feeling generous.’
‘You're never generous about biscuits. Biscuits are your hardline position. Mum says so.’
‘Your mother has opinions about everything.’
‘She's usually right though.’
‘Eat the biscuit, Freddie.’
The mural reached the mid-trunk by early December. The wall was dense, textured, the paint thick enough to cast shadows in the afternoon light.
Neil's students had written thirty-seven pieces for the bark text. Rory had selected eleven, carved them into rubber stamps, and pressed them into the wet surface.
Jade Amir's line was there, The roots hold what the branches reach for, embedded in the bark as if the bark had always held it, and every time Neil walked through the courtyard and saw it, a recognition shifted in him that he didn't have a name for.
It happened on a Saturday. First week of December.
Two o'clock in the afternoon. Rain hammering the windows. And Neil was at Rory's flat because Rory had texted at noon, Schiele book arrived. Come see it before my brother uses it as a coaster, and Neil had picked up his keys and gone.
No system.
No permission.
The flat was different in daylight. Smaller, softer. The windows faced west and the grey light found the canvases stacked against the living room wall and showed their edges. Rory's jacket on a chair. A cereal bowl on the coffee table, abandoned, milk opaque.
They were on the sofa, the paint-splattered sofa, the crime scene of the first Friday, with the Schiele book spread across their laps.
A heavy book. The pages fell open to nudes: twisted bodies, exposed skin, angular limbs arranged with a frankness that bordered on confrontation.
Schiele's men looked out of the page as though daring the viewer to flinch.
‘Look at the hands,’ Rory said. He tapped a reproduction. ‘Nobody draws hands like Schiele. They're not decorative. They're structural. They hold the composition together.’
‘The fingers are too long.’
‘The fingers are exactly right. He distorts to tell the truth.’
‘Distortion for honesty. Your entire philosophy in three words.’
‘Art doesn't need philosophy. It just needs to feel right.’ He turned the page. A standing nude, male, angular, the body contorted into a position that was simultaneously uncomfortable and completely true. ‘Look at this one. He's not comfortable.’
‘He's not supposed to be comfortable. He's supposed to be seen.’
‘He is seen. Every line of him. Schiele didn't leave anything out. Not the ribs, not the hip bone, not the cock. He drew the whole body because the whole body was the point.’
‘Unlike your paintings.’
‘What's that supposed to mean?’
‘Your paintings don't show faces. Schiele showed everything. Face, body, expression, genitals. The full human. You show shoulders and turned heads and the suggestion of a neck. You hide the thing Schiele exposed.’
Rory was quiet for a moment. His thumb on the page, resting on the printed body. ‘I hide the face because the face is too much. If I paint the face, the viewer makes it about identity. About who. I want it to be about what. What the body carries. What the posture says.’
Rory's arm lay along the sofa behind Neil's shoulders. His hand came to rest on Neil's far shoulder, drawing him a fraction closer.
Neil didn't pull away. He let his own weight settle. A millimetre. Two.
The rain on the window. The wine half-drunk on the table. The book between them. Rory's thumb moving against Neil's shoulder, an absent stroke.
‘He died at twenty-eight,’ Neil said.
‘Twenty-eight. Thousands of works. The most honest art ever made. Less than a decade.’ Rory's thumb traced a slow circle on Neil's shoulder.
‘I was terrified of that at twenty-two. The time question.
Too little of it. Now I think the work doesn't care about time. It cares about whether you showed up.’
‘Did you show up?’
‘Every day. Even the bolognese days. Even the days when the painting was shit and Kieran had nits and I hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. I showed up.’ He looked at Neil. ‘That's the only thing I know how to do.’
The front door opened.
Neither registered it. A sound from the hallway. Background noise.
‘The line work in the later paintings is more confident,’ Neil was saying, pointing to a 1917 piece. ‘Less frantic. He's not trying to shock anymore.’
A presence in the doorway.
Neil looked up.
Kieran stood in the living room doorway. School bag over one shoulder, earbuds around his neck, damp from the rain. He'd come back for something, his eyes were already scanning the room, and had stopped mid-scan.
He took in the scene. His brother. The arm around Mr Ashworth's shoulders. The heads close together. The wine. The book. The geometry of two people comfortable enough to forget that comfort was itself a confession.
Neil jerked away from Rory. Violently, too fast. The full-body flinch of a man caught unprepared. The book slid off their laps and hit the floor with a thud like a gavel. Three feet of space opened between them in the time it took to draw one breath.
Colour flooded his face. A full, scorching heat that started at his collar and climbed to his hairline. His arms crossed.
Rory looked at Kieran. Looked at Neil's retreating posture. Exhaled slowly.
Kieran leaned against the doorframe. One eyebrow up. The smirk arrived, practised since the age of twelve.
‘Well, well.’ Arid. He looked from Rory to Neil and back. ‘Finally caught the famous I'm not seeing anyone.’ Beat. ‘Should've guessed. Explains the moping. And the paintings. And the fact that you've been cooking actual meals instead of eating cereal over the sink.’
‘Kieran.’ Rory's voice carried a warning. But it was tired.
‘What? I'm not bothered.’ He addressed this to Neil, whose mortification was radiating in waves visible from space. ‘Relax. I've known Rory was gay since I was about nine. This isn't news.’
Neil couldn't speak. His hands closed.
Kieran opened a cupboard by the door, rummaged, extracted a textbook, Modern Britain, dog-eared, and tucked it under his arm. Turned back.
‘Carry on with your…’ He gestured at the fallen book, the wine, the sofa. ‘Art appreciation.’ The wink he gave Rory was a masterpiece of teenage condescension. ‘Try not to be too loud. The walls are thin and Mrs Garrett downstairs has opinions.’
He walked to the front door. Opened it. Paused.
‘Oh, and Mr Ashworth?’ Neil looked up. Kieran's expression shifted. Still dry, still amused, but with something underneath that was almost kind. ‘He's a better person when you're around. So. Cheers for that.’
And that was that.
The door closed. Footsteps descended. A tuneless whistle, retreating. The building's front door banged shut.
The rain against the window. The wine breathing on the coffee table. The Schiele book on the floor, fallen open to a nude that stared at the ceiling with the same exposure Neil was feeling in every cell.
He couldn't look at Rory. His arms were wrapped around himself. He held what nobody else could. The heat in his face had subsided to a dull burn.
Rory stayed still. He sat on his end of the sofa and waited. Patient.
A minute. Two. The radiator clicked. The rain continued.
‘Right.’ Neil's voice, when it came, was flat and quiet. ‘Your brother knows.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And apparently he thinks you've been moping.’
Rory didn't deny it.
‘This changes things, Rory.’
It already had.
‘Does it.’
‘Someone knows. About us. About...’ The gesture encompassed the sofa, the wine, and three months of Fridays. The fact that he was here on a Saturday afternoon being held. ‘If he tells...’
‘He won't.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because he's my brother. Because I raised him. Because he's the least bothered person in the building.’ Rory shifted forward. Leaning into the conversation without closing the gap. ‘And because this, you and me, isn't something I'm ashamed of. And he knows that.’
‘I'm not asking for a label,’ Rory said. Quieter. ‘I'm not asking you to tell anyone. I'm just... stop pretending this is nothing. You know it isn't. That's all. Because the pretending is killing you.’
‘I'm terrified,’ Neil said. Flat. Direct. ‘That if anyone finds out, parents, colleagues, it'll touch Freddie. That he'll pay the price.’
And he meant it.
‘I know.’
‘You can't know. You don't have a...’ He stopped. Looked at Rory. ‘You raised Kieran. You do know.’
‘Yeah. I know what it's like to build your whole life around keeping someone safe. And I know what it costs when the thing you're protecting them from is yourself.’
The words hit bone. Neil pressed his palms to his face. Held them there. Breathed.
He dropped them. Looked at Rory.
‘My parents have never asked how I was doing,’ he said. ‘Never once since Gemma.’ He looked at his wine. ‘My mother asks about Freddie. About the school. About whether I've had the boiler serviced. She asks about everything except...’ He stopped. ‘You know what she doesn't ask.’
‘Yeah,’ Rory said. ‘I know.’
‘And your dad?’