Chapter Five #4
rest of him would just get the idea and follow suit. “Thanks for
the sympathy.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Merou got his head up, wiping his eyes.
“That’s awful. Bloody funny, though. Back to our eliminations. Lad
isn’t repelled by me, and doesn’t prefer the girls. Kisses like an
angel, and a dirty-minded one at that, but doesn’t raise his flag.
How does that come about, then, blue-eyed boy?”
Priddy
hid his face. “I can’t tell you. I mean—the whole town knew about
it at the time, and then there were doctors, and then a bloody
counsellor, and... I just can’t face going through it with someone
again.”
“All right. But tell me anyway.”
“For crying out loud...”
But
Merou took hold of him and eased him down. He plucked a dead
sea-thrift, which regained life and fragrance as he trailed it over
Priddy’s sealed lips. “Tell me,” he whispered, insistent and gentle
as the murmur of waves in a cave. So Priddy laid his head on
Merou’s shoulder, and told him the whole sorry tale.
***
When he
opened his eyes again, he was alone. He pushed up on his arms and
looked around the deserted clifftop. There wasn’t so much as a dent
in the grass beside him to prove his companion had ever been
there.
Except,
bizarrely, a pile of clothes, neatly folded on a clump of heather.
Priddy scrambled to his feet. His T-shirt was there, his jeans,
everything he’d involuntarily loaned to Merou, down to the socks
and a pair of jockeys which must have indeed matched his eyes.
Priddy gathered the things up. He lifted the T-shirt to his nose,
hoping for a warm trace of kelp, but all he could smell was washing
powder and woodsmoke from festival barbecues and
bonfires.
Good
times. Priddy clutched the clothes and stood swaying. The last few
hours with Merou had been very good, apart from the terrifying
bits. Or maybe even including those, the close call with Doryty
Sharp, and the horseback ride. Priddy had never met a man he wanted
to share bad times with as well as good.
Had he
really met one now? The idea flashed over him that Merou might just
have gone swimming, so he ran to the edge of the cliff and scanned
the beach below.
Which
was just Portheras Cove, half a mile south of the lighthouse and
familiar as the back of his hand. The tide was low, not so much as
a hoofprint or footprint to mark the shore. Priddy’s concerns over
finding his way back to the car faded out, replaced by a deeper
fear. Slowly he turned round. The Vauxhall was sitting, prosaic as
day, on the verge of the Madron road.
The sea horse must have galloped in a circle. Or, as seemed
every second more likely, there never had been a horse, or a
gourmet breakfast, or a breathtakingly lovely nutcase called Merou.
Priddy wondered where he’d come up with the name.
Mer for the sea, he
supposed, and he had gone through a big Kerouac phase, back in the
days when he’d thought he might turn out to be a freewheeling
spirit, not a deck-scrubber in Rosewarne Cove.
He
minded the proofs of insanity much less than usual. His heart felt
emptied out—pleasantly, as if he’d confessed to someone or
something the story of his last few months, and met with no pity or
derision. Maybe he’d just told the sky, which was wintry again now,
deep-bellied cumulus rolling inland. He only wished—oh, wished to
God—that Merou had been real.
A note fell out of the pocket of the jeans. Priddy grabbed it
before the wind could whip it away. He unfolded it with unsteady
fingers, half expecting to find that he’d left a receipt in there,
an old shopping list. The paper crackled, began to disintegrate
under his touch. Sorry, Mountain
King, it said, in a pointed, beautiful,
barely legible script. I got a call and
had to run off on you. Don’t forget about the picnic. Missus and
kids—you know how it is. And underneath,
like X-marks-the-spot on a pirate’s treasure map, a single
kiss.
Priddy didn’t know how it was. By his own admission, Merou
didn’t either. Then, as gay as anyone
could wish didn’t necessarily preclude the
missus and kids. Perhaps a Mrs Merou somewhere loved him as he was,
and had conceived by AI or persuasion to give him the family he
desired. Priddy’s head spun in a vortex of mixed feelings. His
great wish had been granted: this note, written on fragmenting
parchment in squid-black ink as it was, confirmed Merou’s reality
in the most prosaic terms. But what kind of family man—what kind of
husband and dad—spent Saturday afternoon up a cliff, trying to coax
a hard-on from a stranger?
They were strangers to each other. Priddy had no excuse for his pang of
disappointment, for the reflection that Merou hadn’t seemed like
that kind of guy. Maybe his disappearance was just as well. For all
his many foul-ups so far, Priddy had managed to steer clear of
married men.
What
would he do if Merou turned up again now? Priddy’s virtue was
untried. No really attractive married man had pursued him. The
strange parchment disintegrated and blew away in a handful of
glittering dust. Holding the bundle of clothes to his chest, Priddy
made his way slowly back to the car.
She was
boiling hot inside, as if the summer day Merou had conjured still
lingered there. Priddy opened the passenger door as well as his
own, then flipped up the boot. Stood staring, one hand clasped
tight on the lid, at the wickerwork basket inside.
It was
like a bloody fairy tale, or a children’s yarn from one of the
books his mum kept in a box in the loft, dog-eared relics of her
own childhood, stories from a world where kids were sent off for a
day in the country with enough food in a hamper to stop an ox.
Carefully Priddy lifted the red-and-white checked tablecloth.
Beneath it, inexplicably packed in straw, was a bottle of
elderflower cordial and a handsome green-glass goblet—just one, as
if Merou had known that Priddy would end up alone. A brown paper
packet opened at his touch to reveal the kind of sandwiches he’d
used to yearn for while his mum slapped peanut butter on Mighty
White and tartly told her offspring to like it or bloody well make
their own—a big ciabatta bun sliced in half, well stuffed with good
Cheddar and, from the smell of it, a little Parmesan. Marmite
helping the butter to stick it all down. A string of jewel-like
cherry tomatoes, glistening fresh on their vine, and just to place
a mundane crown on all this glory, a bag of Quavers crisps.
Strawberries in a wooden punnet, mysteriously perfect despite the
heat, and a pot of Rodda’s best clotted cream.
His
first thought was that Merou had tracked down and interrogated Kit.
No-one else knew the half of what Priddy might like, in an ideal
world, to find beneath the lid of a picnic basket. But Kit wasn’t
always discreet, and not even to him had Priddy confided his
penchant for ciabatta and parmesan. Tastes like those would have
got him lynched in the lunch room at Land’s End Secondary. Merou
couldn’t possibly have known.
But the
whole bloody thing was impossible. Briefly Priddy entertained a
vision of Merou leaping naked into the Vauxhall while he slept,
racing back down to the village and acquiring this little feast
from the Costcutter. Well, he could’ve got the Marmite and crisps
from there. Everything else... Priddy gave up on the concept of
everything else, on the entire mystery. The food was there and so
was he. Further, he was hungry, just as he had been at breakfast,
his insides clamouring to be nourished and not just left to ache in
peace.
Priddy
spread the cloth, in honour of the day and his vanished friend. It
was really too cold to sit outside, but he settled cross-legged
with the picnic basket beside him, poured a big glass of the
cordial and held it up to the sun.