Chapter Five #3
trotting over, head held high, blowing warily through her nostrils.
Her flanks were matted with grass stains and mud. Merou caught her
by the mane just over her withers, and she snaked her neck around
his back, either trying to bite or embrace him. To Priddy’s
astonishment, he used her spinning momentum to launch himself
upwards, springing easily onto her back. “There you go, queen of
the waves,” he said, laughing, and put down a lean-muscled arm.
“Your turn now. Up you come.”
Priddy
backed off. “You have to be joking.”
“Don’t you know how to drive—er, ride one?”
“No, I don’t. And you can’t either. You can’t just jump on a
random wild horse and... What about a saddle? How do you
steer?”
“Is there any need, in a place like this? Every direction’s as
good as all the rest. We’ll just go.”
“Merou, no. I don’t think I want to. I—”
Merou
seized him by the armpit. Priddy had once been strong and lithe,
but even back then he couldn’t have made the leap from ground level
onto the back of a circling, skittering horse. Yet last night Merou
had grabbed him and bodily thrown him out of the water, halfway up
the beach to safety... His muscles convulsed. “Shit! Let me
go!”
He
landed hard on the poor beast’s rump. The impact—bollock-flat,
straddled—knocked the wind from him, and he grabbed on reflex for
Merou’s waist. “Attaboy,” Merou said complacently, squeezing his
heels against the mare’s flanks. “All right back there?”
“No. Fucking... ruined myself. Jesus Christ.”
“Oh, the meat and two veg? Family jewels? External John Thomas
and Co? Got to watch out for those, haven’t you? Bloody liability,
they are.” He leaned forward, drawing Priddy with him. “That’s it,
then, old girl—off you go!”
Priddy
hung on. The horse took a random leap towards the track—the car,
the village, the last place he could remember anything making
sense—then seemed to change her mind. She wheeled through a perfect
half-circle, tossed her head and set off at a bunch-rumped, jolting
canter for the sea.
Surely he’d slide down her ribcage and hit the turf. Fear
jumped to life in him like an ugly old friend. He hadn’t cared
lately for the safety of his skin and bones at all. But he couldn’t
yell Merou, I want to be off
like a frightened toddler on the teacup ride at
the fair, so he scrabbled for balance and tried to adapt to the
three-time beat slamming at him through the horse’s spine. The feel
of it tossed up a memory. He had ridden bareback before, a
pony-ride with Kit on Newquay beach when they’d been six or seven
years old. His ma reluctantly parting with the pound coin, and
Priddy, entranced by the feel of trotting through the surf,
ignoring the pony man’s yells to turn round, setting the fat little
beast to a gallop instead. The hiding he’d got from his dad when
they reeled him in, worth every impact of the big hand on his
backside...
Where had Kit disappeared to that day? Odd thing to worry
about whilst clinging for dear life to a stranger’s waist, but
there it was, and Priddy laid his brow to Merou’s shoulder to give
it thought. Kit had been riding the pony behind. He must have
stopped at the turn point like a good boy, and made himself scarce
when the shit hit the fan. There was no pain in this realisation,
just a sense of acceptance. Friendship had limits. Priddy’s lonely,
hungry soul blossomed out and expanded in this knowledge: people
were limited. It wasn’t just him.
The sea
horse found a new pace. The jolting stopped. Now she was eating up
ground in long, easy strides, imparting a powerful rock. “Better?”
Merou shouted, his voice cracked with laughter, and Priddy nodded
speechlessly against his arm. The sun flared around them as if it
was laughing too, and ahead of them the sea laughed back, opening
up to emeralds and blue.
Too
close.
Way too
fucking close. Priddy spared a hand to point. “Merou, the
cliff.”
“What about it?”
“She’ll go off the edge. Make her stop.”
“Oh, I can’t do that. We’ll have to jump.”
“What? We can’t...”
But
there was no more time. And no more limits—Merou had none, anyway,
fearlessly swinging one leg over the horse’s mane. Balanced for a
second in unlikely sidesaddle: threw an arm round Priddy’s waist
and leapt.
Priddy
hit him, not the ground. Landed flat on top, hard enough to shatter
ribs, but Merou only yelled in delight and rolled, rolled all the
danger and hurt out of their fall, rolled Priddy over in the turf
and went under once more himself until all their momentum was gone.
“Got you, you see? You’re all right.”
“But the horse... The sea horse...” Priddy broke off, coughing,
and heaved up onto his hands and knees. “Christ, she went off the
cliff!”
“It’s in the nature of her kind to do so. Come on, have a
look.”
Priddy
didn’t want to. He couldn’t bear to see a wreck of blood and bones
on the serpentine rocks below, a lovely thing destroyed because
Merou had fancied a joy-ride. “No! Why did you let her do
that?”
“For heaven’s sake, Priddy. Just look.”
So he
did. Down on the sands, great waves were piling in from the west.
The wind wasn’t strong enough to build such surf, but nevertheless
there they were, rush after foaming rush of them, necks arching,
rainbow manes blinding in the sun. And there, thundering out to
meet them, the horse from the Prés des Chevaux, joy blazing out of
her at every pounding stride.
She was real enough to leave hoofprints. Priddy watched for
long enough to see her hit the waves and burst into foam and
rainbows, and then he could no longer patch thought to thought,
moment to moment, vision to reality. He swung round to face Merou,
falling to his backside on the grass. “What happened?” he asked
brokenly. “What was that? Who the hell are you?”
“Ah, Priddy. You’re so tired. You worry so much about
everything all the time, and none of it matters, you know. Not
really.”
“Merou, please. I’m not... I’ve been ill lately, and I
sometimes see things that aren’t there. Please don’t fuck with my
head.”
“Come here.” Merou was lying on the turf with his hands tucked
behind his head, as if the fall had never taken place. As if he’d
been lounging there for hours, just waiting and hoping that Priddy
might happen along. He was right about one thing—Priddy
was tired, worn to the
bone with the effort of everyday life. How did other people do it?
Live, breathe, earn their rent, screw around, raise families,
achieve things? To Priddy it all seemed as distant and impossible
as deep galactic travel, as stars. “I’m useless,” he rasped. “I
don’t think I’m even really here.”
“Well, I’m fairly certain I’m
not. Come here, my handsome. Join me in sweet
nonexistence.”
Priddy
wondered if that meant they had to follow the sea horse off the
cliff. But all Merou did was hold out one arm, and after a moment
he crawled into it.
He lay
watching the sky. It was an impossible blue for November, a shade
to make grasshoppers chirr and larks soar out of the heather.
Somewhere out there the day was still cold, but down here with
Merou, pressed to his side, he was warm as a peach against a
greenhouse wall. “I believe I’d like to kiss you,” Merou said,
turning to face him. “How would you feel about that?”
Politely, distantly, Priddy considered the question. “I
believe I’d like to be kissed. Please don’t expect too much,
though.”
“I’ll try to keep an open mind.”
Merou
leaned in. He kissed Priddy gently, no more than a moth-brush of
heat across his lips. Priddy smiled and shivered, and he went for
it again, powerfully this time, cupping Priddy’s jaw in his
hand.
He
kissed him experimentally, investigatively. Then thoroughly, right
to the tongue-root, Priddy thrusting back, eyes closed, tangling
his fingers in Merou’s hair. A kiss like that ought to have raised
the dead. Priddy did his best to be raised. When Merou stroked a
querying palm across the front of his jeans, Priddy let his head
fall back. He stared blankly off once more into the fake-summer
sky. “I’m sorry. Sorry, mate. Fuck.”
Merou
leaned on his chest. He propped his chin on the back of one hand
and studied him. “Right,” he said, as if Priddy were a jam jar with
a sticky lid, a box that required a crowbar, some everyday soluble
problem instead of a disaster. “Lad doesn’t fancy me, is the
obvious conclusion to draw.”
Priddy
sighed. Merou didn’t seem plagued by insecurities. And it was all
right not to fancy him, wasn’t it—even to say so, even after a
tonsillectomy-snog like that. Still, in the interests of
truthfulness... “Obvious, maybe. But wrong.”
“So, we eliminate that. Next—lad is maybe not gay, or not as
gay as he thought, and would prefer other company, softer round the
chest region, with the delicate parts tucked away, or most of ’em
at any rate. That is still the arrangement, isn’t it, with the land
ladies?”
“Landladies?”
“Ah, careful. Don’t pack down your English too much, or your
socks and your knickers will get tangled in the suitcase. Ladies of
the land. Dames de
terre. Not pommes
de terre—female primates who live up on
topside, the whole lovely lot of them, Doryty Sharp
included.”
Priddy snorted. “Stop it, you clown. Don’t you
know?”
“I know my own kind. Though, as far as that goes, and since I’m
asking you, it’s only fair to tell—I am as gay as I thought. As anyone
could wish.”
“Honest, mate, I’m getting about one word in ten with you at
the moment. But me, too. From birth and probably prior.”
“Oh, dear. That serious a case, eh?”
“Mm. They even wrote a poem about it.”
“Times Literary Supplement?”
“Toilet wall in my junior school. Bloody uncanny, it’s raining fanny. Just Priddy’s luck—he’s
queer as fuck.”
Merou
gave a strangled hiccup. Then he dissolved into giggles, burying
his face on Priddy’s chest. The warmth of his breath made Priddy’s
nipples contract and harden, and he’d have given the world if the