Chapter 10
THE BARN
First day of spring term, Neil saw Rory across the staff room and forgot how to swallow.
Again.
On the counter, the usual spot: Rory's travel mug with the peeling koi. And beside it, where the paper cup had been every morning since October, a second travel mug. Smaller. Steel. New. No name in biro. No Post-it. Just the flat white, still hot, inside something that wasn't going in the bin.
Neil picked it up. Drank. Said nothing. The handle was cold and the coffee was right and the mug was his and Rory hadn't mentioned it and wasn't going to.
Two weeks since term ended. Ten days since the flat.
Ten days of phone calls in the dark, texts that said nothing and meant everything.
And now Rory was standing by the notice board with a coffee, talking to Martin Clarke about something that involved hand gestures, and the sight of him, curls loose, paint already on his wrist at nine in the morning, hit Neil in the chest.
Their eyes met. Four seconds. Sue Dhillon looked up from her mug as though she'd felt static.
Later, between periods, Rory found him outside the art supply cupboard. The corridor was empty. Fluorescent light buzzing overhead.
‘Tonight.’ Low. No preamble. ‘You're not coming directly to mine. We're going somewhere before that.’
‘Where?’
‘The Barn. I'm taking you to meet my people. Properly.’
‘Rory...’
‘Tess, Patrick, Kieran. They know about you. They want to meet you. As Neil. Just Neil.’
Neil's back was against the supply cupboard door. The fluorescent light buzzed. ‘All of them.’
‘All of them.’
‘I don't think I can...’
‘Neil.’ Rory stood a foot away. Hands in pockets. ‘They're my home. I want them to know you.’
The word home sat between them. Poster paint and floor polish in the corridor. A Year 7 clattered past with a violin case.
‘Okay,’ Neil said. Too fast. Like saying okay to a dentist before the drill.
Rory drove. An old Volvo, oil paint and a vanilla air freshener Kieran had hung from the mirror as a joke that had become permanent.
The road out of town climbed towards the hills, streets thinning to hedgerows and farmland, streetlights giving way to dark fields and a sky that opened overhead.
January stars, cold and bright, in the gaps between clouds.
Neil sat in the passenger seat and felt sick.
A heavier sick than the nights he'd driven to Rory's flat. The gut-level dread of being introduced to people who mattered to the person he was sleeping with.
‘You're very quiet,’ Rory said.
‘I'm processing.’
‘You're panicking.’
‘I'm processing my panic. It's a two-stage system.’
‘They're going to love you, Neil. Tess already has opinions about your bookshelf based entirely on what I've told her, and Patrick will shake your hand and say two words all evening and you'll know exactly where you stand.’
‘And Beth?’
‘Beth will show you her drawings. Accept the drawings. Do not suggest improvements.’
‘Has someone suggested improvements?’
‘Kieran said it needed a longer tail. He's still in recovery.’
The road narrowed. Hedgerows closing in on both sides, headlights catching bare branches in silver. A rabbit bolted across the tarmac. The countryside had a different silence from the town, wider, less insulated.
‘What have you told them?’ Neil asked.
‘About you?’
‘About me. About us. What do they think this is?’
Rory's hands shifted on the wheel. ‘I told Tess your name and that you're a teacher and that you make me want to paint warmer colours. Patrick knows because Tess told him and because Patrick knows everything.’
‘And what word did you use?’
‘Word?’
‘For what we are.’
‘I didn't use a word. I told Tess I'd met someone. She asked if he was worth it. I said yes.’ He changed gear for the hill. ‘That's the word, isn't it. Someone. The rest is detail.’
The Barn sat at the end of a lane. A stone building, low-roofed, amber light spilling from windows that had no curtains and no intention of getting any.
A pub sign, hand-painted, Rory's work, Neil could tell from the brushwork, swinging in the January wind.
The smell of something roasting, and beneath it the cold mineral scent of open country.
Neil put his hands in his pockets. They were shaking.
He didn't take them out.
Rory came round the car and stood beside him. Didn't take his hand. Didn't touch him. Just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, and the presence was enough. Woodsmoke and frost in the air and the faint peaty dampness of moor. From inside, music, something acoustic, music for a building with a fire.
‘Ready?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Means you care.’
‘I care to the point of nausea.’
‘That's very romantic.’
‘I'm not trying to be romantic. I'm trying not to be sick on your shoes.’
‘These shoes have survived Kieran's cooking. They can survive anything.’
Inside: warmth hit first. A long wooden table in the private dining area behind the bar. Candles in bottles, wax dripped down the sides in patterns that looked meant but weren't.
A fire in a stone hearth, the logs thick and split and burning with the steady orange glow of wood that had been dried properly. Flagstone floors worn smooth. The ceiling low, dark-beamed.
The walls held photographs of the valley in different seasons and a small painting Neil recognised as one of Rory's earlier pieces, a landscape, muted, greens and greys.
Gentler than the fierce figurative work.
A view, painted without needing to make it about more or less than the thing itself.
A gift, clearly. Hung in the best spot, above the fireplace, where the light was warmest.
A woman was already moving to meet them. Shorter than Neil had imagined, sharp-eyed, a woman whose smile assessed you while welcoming you. Chef's apron, flour-dusted hands. Rosemary and lemon. She looked at Neil for approximately three seconds and her face settled. Recognition rather than approval.
‘Rory doesn't shut up about you.’
‘Tess.’ Rory's warning tone. Laughing underneath.
‘What? You don't. It's been insufferable. We've heard about Neil's bookshelf, Neil's spice rack, Neil's colour-coded folders. I feel like I've been dating him myself.’
Patrick stood beside her. Tall, broad-handed. He had the hands of a baker and a carpenter and possibly the one who'd built the table they were about to eat at. His hair was grey at the temples and his face was weathered and kind. He occupied the room solidly, without apology.
He shook Neil's hand. The grip was firm, dry.
‘Alright,’ Patrick said.
‘Thank you for having me,’ Neil said. Patrick's face didn't change, the welcome already delivered, the assessment already made.
‘Sit down, Neil.’ Tess put a glass of wine in his hand. ‘Red. Rory says you drink red. If it's wrong, blame him.’
Kieran was at the far end of the table. Phone. Universal posture. He raised a hand, eyes on his phone. ‘Alright, Mr Ashworth.’
‘Kieran.’
‘Food's good here. Tess cooks. Patrick does pudding. Don't eat the bread too fast. It fills you up and you'll miss the lamb.’
‘The bread's that good?’
‘The bread is a controlled substance. Patrick should be arrested.’
A border collie asleep by the fire lifted its head, assessed Neil with the professional interest of a dog who'd seen every type, and put its head back down. Verdict: acceptable.
Neil sat. Drank wine. Tried to remember how normal people behaved in social situations. He gripped the glass too tightly, answered Tess's questions in sentences that were either too short or too long, and knocked over the salt cellar.
But the bread helped. Patrick's bread. He tore off a piece, ate it, and the quality was so immediate, the crust shattering, the crumb dense and sour and warm, that the rest of the room fell away for a second.
‘This is extraordinary,’ Neil said. And meant it.
He relaxed.
‘He's obsessive about it,’ Rory said.
‘I'm dedicated. There's a difference.’
‘The difference is about twelve hours and a digital thermometer.’
‘The difference,’ Patrick said, with quiet authority, ‘is between bread that's adequate and bread that's worth eating. I assume you understand the distinction, Mr Ashworth. You teach English. You know the difference between a sentence that's adequate and a sentence that's worth reading.’
‘I do.’
‘Then you understand.’
Tess caught Neil's eye and mouthed: He likes you.
They ate. Tess's lamb, slow-roasted, falling off the bone, cooking that treated time as an ingredient. Roast potatoes that Patrick had made and that were, by the unanimous agreement of the table, extraordinary.
‘These are the best potatoes I've ever eaten,’ Neil said.
‘Don't tell him that,’ Rory said. ‘He'll be impossible.’
‘I'm already impossible,’ Patrick said.
‘How do you get the outside this crispy?’
‘Goose fat. Parboiled for exactly seven minutes. Then shaken in the colander until the edges go fluffy. Then into fat at two hundred degrees for forty-five minutes. Then turn them once. Once. Once. People who turn them twice are the reason this country is in decline.’
‘Patrick has a position on potato-turning frequency.’
‘It's not a position. It's a fact.’
‘Like Neil has a position on cinnamon placement,’ Rory said.
‘You told them about the cinnamon?’
‘I told them everything about the cinnamon. The cinnamon is a central topic.’
‘The cinnamon is a spice in a jar that belongs between cardamom and cumin.’
‘Alphabetical?’ Tess asked.
‘Obviously.’
‘Obviously,’ she repeated. Looked at Rory. Looked at Neil. ‘You two are going to be insufferable together. Water and oil.’
‘We already are,’ Rory said. ‘Ask Sue Dhillon.’
Tess asked Neil about teaching. He told her about Jake Hargreaves and the but and the fire drill. She laughed, a full, head-back laugh.
‘I love that,’ she said. ‘The but. Every good meal has a but in it too. You think it's going one direction and then something unexpected happens. An ingredient you didn't plan, a temperature shift, a mistake that turns out to be better than the intention.’
‘Like Rory's cheerful commission.’