Chapter 9
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH
He drove home with Freddie asleep in the back seat with overcooked beef in his mouth.
Late Christmas night. Freddie asleep. His phone vibrated.
Rory.
He picked up before the second ring. Walked to the window. Kept his voice low.
‘Hey.’
‘Hey.’ Rory's voice was rough at the edges. Late-night rough. The voice of alone with nothing but a phone and a person on the other end.
‘Happy Christmas.’
‘You already said that. This morning.’
‘Felt like saying it again.’
‘How was yours?’
‘Good. Tess made a roast that could end wars. Patrick's treacle tart. Beth told me reindeer can't fly because of body mass ratios.’
‘Beth sounds like a scientist.’
‘Beth is eight. She's a terrorist with facts.’ A beat. ‘How was yours?’
‘The beef was dry. My father slept through the pudding. My mother moved the cinnamon again.’
‘She didn't. Did you move it back?’
‘I moved it back while she was in the bathroom.’
‘You absolute rebel.’
‘I have my moments.’
They talked. The house was quiet behind him, radiator clicking in the hall, the garden dark through the window.
‘What did Beth get?’
‘A microscope. An actual microscope. She’s been examining the turkey since three o’clock. She told Patrick the gravy had an unacceptable particle density.’
‘She said particle density?’
‘She said particle density and then she drank it anyway, which Patrick took as a compliment.’
Neil stood at the window in his socks. His father’s hedge was a black line against the sky, perfect even in December.
‘What about you?’ Neil said. ‘What did you get?’
‘Socks. Good ones, thick, from Tess. A bottle of something Patrick made in his shed that could strip paint. And Kieran got me a sketch pad.’ A pause. ‘He’d gone to the art shop. Picked the right weight. 200gsm, acid-free, the one I use for charcoal studies. I didn’t know he’d noticed.’
‘Of course he noticed.’
‘He’s eighteen. Eighteen-year-olds notice football boots and girls and very little else.’
‘He noticed because you matter to him. People pay attention to the things that matter.’
The line went quiet. Music on Rory’s end, slow and low, strings maybe, what Rory played when he was painting and had forgotten to switch it off.
‘You still there?’ Neil said.
‘I’m here. Just thinking about what you said. About paying attention.’
‘Don’t read into it.’
‘I’m a painter. I read into everything.’ A breath. Almost a laugh. ‘Are you in the hallway?’
‘Standing by the window. In my socks. The carpet is awful, since you ask.’
‘What colour?’
‘Beige. The colour of beige. It aspires to nothing. It’s the carpet equivalent of dry beef.’
‘Your parents’ house sounds like a show home that hates joy.’
‘It’s a show home that hates joy and overseasons the parsnips and moves the cinnamon and yet somehow I keep coming back every year, so perhaps I’m the problem.’
‘You’re not the problem.’
He said it simply. No teasing register, no irony. Two words, dropped flat, and Neil gripped the phone tighter.
‘Tess made enough food for twelve people,’ Rory said.
‘There were five of us. Patrick's been sending us home with containers, Kieran alone went home with five of them. My fridge looks like a doomsday bunker.’ A pause.
‘Patrick asked when I was going to get a proper job.
Over the turkey. Tess hit him with a serving spoon but he'd already said it.’
‘It's fine. He didn't mean it badly. He worries. He thinks art is a hobby and I'm a grown man with a teenager and no pension.’ Another pause. Shorter. ‘He's not wrong about the pension.’
‘Does Tess always cook for twelve?’
‘Tess always cooks for whoever might turn up. She leaves room. It's her thing. The table's always got an extra place. Even when she knows how many are coming.’ A beat. ‘I think it's because she grew up without enough. The cooking is the opposite. The cooking is there will always be enough here.’
‘That's the opposite of my mother's table. My mother cooks exactly the right amount. Down to the gram. Nobody gets seconds because there are no seconds. The portions are calculated. The leftovers are zero.’
‘Jesus.’
‘It's efficient.’
‘It's terrifying.’
‘It's how I grew up. You grow up with exact portions and you learn that there's never more. Never surplus. Never an extra place.’
The line was quiet. The dark on both sides. From the other end, the faint sound of music, what Rory was playing earlier, still on, still low.
‘Yesterday... I told Gemma,’ Neil said.
Silence.
‘About you. About us.’
A long beat. The sound of Rory breathing.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said bring you for tea.’
Another silence. Shorter. Then Rory's voice, rough and low and carrying something that sounded, for the first time, like hope: ‘Yeah?’
Soft.
‘Yeah.’
‘Was she...’
‘She wasn't surprised. She said she knew from the acrylic paint.’
‘The acrylic paint?’
‘I started buying acrylic paint for Freddie. For your class. She apparently took this as conclusive evidence.’
‘That you were sleeping with the art teacher?’
‘That I was doing something that wasn't running five miles and marking essays. The acrylic paint was, in her words, 'the first sign of life in four years.'’
Rory laughed, low. ‘I like Gemma.’
‘Everyone likes Gemma. Gemma is the most likeable person I know. She's also the most terrifying.’
‘More terrifying than your mum?’
‘Different kind. My mum is terrifying because she's cold. Gemma's terrifying because she's right. About everything. Always.’
‘She was right about you.’
‘She was right about me.’
‘Night, Neil.’
‘Night.’
Neither hung up. Three seconds of open line. Breathing. The dark on both sides.
Rory hung up first. The screen darkened.
Bed. Flat quiet. Lock checked.
On the living room wall, Rory’s painting. Two figures, gold and warm. The space between them.
You're pointing at something, Diane had said. I'd like to know what.
He was.
She would.
She always did.
Rory arrived seven minutes early and apologised for it.
Neil opened the door in a jumper he changed out of, then back into, then flattened the front of with both hands in the thirty seconds between the buzzer and the landing.
Rory stood on the mat holding a bottle of red in one hand and his helmet in the other and a carrier bag looped over his wrist with something bread-shaped inside it.
‘Bus was quicker than I thought,’ Rory said. ‘I can stand on the stairs for seven minutes if you want.’
‘Come in.’
He came in.
The flat was smaller than Rory’s and better lit and, the moment another person was inside it, very obviously a flat lived in alone, on purpose.
The coats on the hook by the door were his.
The shoes under the bench were his. The small green parka that usually hung below the adult coats had gone to Tooting with Freddie on the twenty-third.
‘Kitchen’s through,’ Neil said.
Rory toed off his boots. Under them: mismatched grey socks. One plain, one ribbed. He looked down at his own feet and then up at Neil with an expression that was not quite a smile.
‘I did try,’ he said.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Your face said something.’
‘My face is just my face.’
‘Your face is a whole committee.’
Neil took the bottle. The label was better than the one he would have bought for himself on a Sunday.
He put it on the counter and got two glasses down from the cupboard, and the cupboard was, of course, arranged by size, and Rory registered this with a small silent noise that was not a laugh and was not not a laugh.
‘Go on,’ Neil said.
‘I didn’t say anything.’
‘Your face said something.’
‘My face is telling me the glasses live by height.’
‘They live by height because it works.’
‘And the spice rack?’ Rory said, because he had already turned and seen it.
‘Alphabetical.’
‘Of course it is.’
‘It’s not a performance. It’s just easier.’
‘I know, love. That’s what’s killing me.’
Neil turned back to the hob because if he did not turn back to the hob he was going to have to address Rory calling him love in his own kitchen before the risotto had even started.
He had the stock on already. Low, not simmering. He had the onion diced into pieces that were almost exactly the same size because that was how he liked them and there was no one here to tell him it didn’t matter.
‘Sit,’ he said, and tipped his head towards the stool on the far side of the counter.
Rory sat. He did not pick up his wine. He put both forearms on the counter and watched Neil the way Neil watched him, that first night, unloading the van in the rain. He decided this was worth getting right.
‘Are you going to talk me through it,’ Rory said, ‘or am I just meant to be impressed?’
‘You can be impressed.’
‘All right.’
‘The onion goes in with the butter first. Not oil.’
‘Why not oil.’
‘Because my grandmother used butter.’
‘Fair.’
He put the butter in. The butter hissed. He put the onion in after it and lowered the heat and stirred it with a wooden spoon that had been his grandmother’s too,.
‘Rice next,’ he said.
‘What kind.’
‘Carnaroli. Arborio’s fine but carnaroli holds better.’
‘Holds better at what.’
‘Being risotto.’
Rory made the small silent noise again.
The rice went in. It caught the butter and went translucent at the edges and Neil poured Rory’s wine without asking.
‘You’re showing off,’ Rory said.
‘A bit.’
‘Good.’
Neil ladled the first of the stock in. Stirred. Waited. Ladled the next. The rhythm of it was the thing. You could not hurry risotto and you could not walk away from it and this was why he had offered it.
‘It smells like someone’s mum’s house,’ Rory said.
‘Whose mum.’
‘A better one. Better than mine.’
Neil laughed. He hadn’t been planning to. It came out of him as it had been coming out for weeks, not asking permission, and he stirred the rice and felt it happen and did not try to put it back.
‘Get the parmesan out of the fridge,’ he said. ‘Top shelf. On the left.’
Rory slid off the stool and crossed to the fridge and opened it and stopped.