Chapter Four Last Christmas
They walked to Rahul’s mother’s home mostly in silence.
The streets were hushed, lampposts illuminating a reluctant flurry that threatened to break out into a full snow at any moment.
Julian had the hood of his parka up, hiding his face from view.
Rahul kept throwing worried, sidelong glances at him as if he might disappear when he wasn’t looking.
He kept nervously readjusting the parcels under his arm.
“She’ll be pleased to see you,” Rahul reassured Julian for the hundredth time since he’d met him at the train.
The hood of Julian’s parka nodded.
Rahul hated these silences. Before… everything, you’d be hard-pressed to shut Julian up. Now he was always quiet, thinking. At least tonight would be a distraction from trying to decipher whatever was going on inside that head of his.
Rahul rapped on the red door set into the brick front of the house. It opened in moments, revealing the warm, cheerily lit interior and the stout form of his stepfather, Ron, along with two yapping little balls of fluff that Ron had to keep back with his foot.
Ron’s bristly eyebrows drew up, which was the most delight he was capable of expressing. “Ah,” he said, by way of greeting. “Come on in out of the cold then, boys.”
Once they were safely inside and shedding their coats, dogs nipping at their heels, Rahul and Ron shook hands stiffly.
“Good to see you, sir,” Rahul said.
“And you, my boy.”
“What’s all this?” Julian smiled. “A military parade?” He went in and hugged Ron, who showed he was startled by stiffening minutely. He was pleased, though, Rahul could tell, because he didn’t pull away.
“Is that you?” Rahul’s mother’s warm, accented voice preceded her before she sashayed into the hall, her festive sari twinkling in the golden lamplight and reflecting in her golden smile.
“I thought I heard your voice. How lovely to see you.” Rahul held out his arms for his mother’s embrace but was pushed aside as she pulled Julian into a crushing hug.
“Cheers, Mrs. Chaand -- sorry, Mrs. Field,” Julian said, hugging her back just as tightly.
Rahul rolled his eyes. Even in his mother’s home, Julian was everyone’s favourite.
“I haven’t seen you since you were a boy,” Mum was saying, trying to pat Julian’s hair flat even as Julian was trying to dart away from her hands. “Look at you. So skinny! Do you not eat? Come, dinner is almost ready. We must put food in you.”
“He eats, Mum,” Rahul grumbled as she led him away, not even having spared Rahul a glance. Ron clapped Rahul on the shoulder in a sympathetic, manly sort of way, and the two of them followed into the sitting room.
As soon they were through the door, Rahul was tackled around the middle by a pair of skinny arms. He chuckled, ruffling a mop of messy, black hair. At least someone was happy to see him.
“Rahul, Rahul, Rahul,” his little half-brother, Dennis, was saying, as if repeating his name over and over again might somehow make up for lost time. He stepped back just as quickly and started trying to wrest the parcels out from under Rahul’s arm. “Those for me?”
“Oh, is that all I’m good for now?” Rahul joked. “Not my sparkling wit or charming company?”
Dennis scrunched up his nose in confusion and Rahul rolled his eyes fondly, handing the boy the wrapped presents. “Here, go put these under the tree. And no peeking. Father Christmas will know.”
Dennis did as he was told, but still spent a fair amount of time shaking the packages, ear pressed to the colourful, poorly wrapped paper, as if trying to determine their contents with echolocation.
“Christ, he’s gotten big,” Julian said. Rahul hadn’t noticed him come up beside him. He was holding a cup of mulled wine and watching Dennis gently squeezing one of the soft parcels.
Rahul realized that Julian probably hadn’t seen Dennis since he was maybe two years old.
Now at nine, he must seem like an entirely different child.
Rahul felt a stab of guilt. If it hadn’t been for…
what happened that one night, they would have remained friends and Julian could have visited him every year, maybe more.
It came to him with sudden dismay that he had no idea what Julian had done for Christmas after their falling out but before he’d met Aisling.
Had he been all on his own, the way he would have been this year?
Had Rahul been holed up in his father’s home, feeling sorry for himself, while Julian, life of the party, sparkly social butterfly, had been sitting alone in his dorm room, eating curry and watching old Christmas movies on the telly?
“Rahul, there you are,” someone said, dragging him back to the present.
He looked to see his stepfather’s sister and her husband approaching.
She was younger than Ron by some ten years and was a pretty woman for her age.
Her husband was a congenial man who had been kind to Rahul whenever they had met.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Have you said your hellos to Mama yet?
” She gestured to the wisp of an ancient woman who was fast asleep in the overstuffed armchair.
“Not yet,” Rahul said, smiling politely.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Julian shift awkwardly.
“Grace, this is my mate,” Rahul introduced quickly.
“Julian Collier. Julian, this is --” Rahul hesitated for a moment.
Step-aunt? Was that even a thing? “My aunt Grace and her husband, Mark.” He supposed it was close enough.
There was much hand-shaking and polite nodding.
It was so bizarre to see Julian -- Julian as he was now -- here in his mother and stepfather’s home, shaking hands with an extremely normal and boring couple, surrounded by faded old furniture that hadn’t been refreshed since the coronation.
He wasn’t his usual kitted out self, of course, but he still stood out like a sore thumb.
His version of “toned down” was to clothe himself from head to toe in all black.
He looked like a goth at a funeral instead of a man at a Christmas party.
At least he hadn’t worn any makeup. That would have sent Grace and Mark into a faint.
As it was, they were eyeing Julian’s black painted nails with some concern.
Luckily, Rahul’s mother announced that dinner was ready and they proceeded in an orderly fashion into the dining room.
Julian didn’t eat with any less enthusiasm than he had as a child.
It occurred to Rahul that maybe he didn’t eat enough.
When Julian was a boy, his mother often had to forgo groceries in order to pay rent, so he had come to Rahul’s flat for supper on more than one occasion.
When they were teens, Julian had a part-time job in a dress shop so he could feed Mel, but he still usually pocketed the extra in order to buy clothes or records for himself.
These days, Rahul mostly saw Julian eat when he or someone else was buying.
He hardly ever saw Julian buy food for himself.
But he was constantly showing up with a new ridiculous top or sparkly new boots.
It made sense, now that Rahul thought about it.
They made hardly any money from the shop, even less from their gigs.
Where could Julian be getting the money, if not by foregoing food?
It was stupid. It was vain. It eschewed common sense.
And yet Rahul felt ridiculously misty-eyed at the idea of Julian going hungry so he could look his best. So he could invest in something that mattered to him.
Rahul also felt horrendously guilty for not having noticed before now.
While he passed Julian the shepherd’s pie so he could help himself to another serving, he made a silent promise to himself to find an excuse to feed Julian as much as possible.
“Tell us, Julian,” his mother was saying. “How have you been? What have you been doing? We’ve missed you so much, beta.”
“Aw, thanks, Mrs. Field,” Julian said, lowering his head shyly in a way that squeezed Rahul’s heart. “I’ve been brilliant. Honest. Your son’s taken good care of me.”
That made Rahul turn to look at him quizzically. Julian gave a quick, bashful smile before looking away.
“That is my boy,” Mum said, reaching across the table to pat Rahul’s hand. “So selfless. But he spends his time taking care of you, when will he find himself a nice girl?”
“Saanvi,” Ron said in a not-quite-groan that spoke of having had this conversation many times.
Rahul swallowed the food that had suddenly turned to ash in his mouth.
He felt all of the eyes at the table on him, save for Dennis, who was surreptitiously giving little pieces of ham to the dogs under the table.
He wished the floor would open under him and let him fall into the cellar to be eaten by rats.
“What?” Mum asked, feigning innocence. “Every year, we ask him, when will you bring someone home for Christmas? And now he brings someone and it is his friend. Not that we are not happy to see you, beta,” she added with feeling, reaching out to pat Julian’s hand, too.
It hurt because Rahul did have someone in his life, a person he could bring to his mother’s home for the holidays.
But what would his parents say if he brought Henri to dinner as his partner?
He had never even considered coming out to his parents.
For a long time, he just hadn’t seen the point.
After all, the only person in the world he loved was Julian, and it’s not like he was ever going to bring Julian home as his date, so why did his parents need to know if he was gay?
Now though… He couldn’t bear the thought of his mother’s eyes going wide, or the disgust that would rise in Ron’s expression as he told them the truth, or either of them picturing him kissing another man.
Let alone actually kissing another man in front of them.
The idea made him want to stab the fork he was holding into the back of his hand.