Chapter 15 #2
And the thing that happens, the thing I didn’t know would happen, is that my body gives up.
Gives up the thing it’s been holding. The control.
The need to drive, to push, to build, to carry.
The hands that hold the level and the trowel and the blocks and the weight of a site and seventeen men and a brother who needed saving and a father who went quiet.
The hands let go. They let go and find the sheets and twist and hold on to nothing and the nothing is enough.
Celyn’s forehead on mine, the breath. The rhythm that Celyn sets and I follow and the following is the hardest thing I’ve ever done and the floor could give and I’d fall and I’m falling and the floor doesn’t, then the angle changes.
One inch, maybe less. And something in me, something I didn’t know was there, fires.
Like touching a live wire buried in a wall you thought was dead.
My whole body jerks and a sound comes out of me that isn’t language and Celyn says ‘yeah, right there’ and does it again and the wire fires again and my spine bows off the bed.
‘Look at me,’ Celyn says. ‘Ronan.’
I look. Eyeliner smudged. Lipstick gone except in the corners. The bralette off one shoulder. The eyes on mine. The hips rolling.
‘Watch me,’ Celyn says. ‘Watch what I do to you.’
My cock between us, untouched, hard against Celyn’s stomach, sliding slick with the smear of pre-come across the skin. I could come from this. From not being touched. From watching. Celyn rolls again, that one inch, the wire, the wire, the wire.
‘Yeah,’ Celyn says. ‘Like that.’
My hands grab whatever they can find, Celyn’s arms, the sheets, the headboard, and my mouth is open and there’s no thought.
It tears through me, hot, between us, the cock untouched, the curl of toes, the back bowing.
A sound that’s animal coming out of me. Celyn keeps moving through it, milking it, the eyes never leaving mine.
Wave on wave, gut to throat. The body emptying.
The site is gone, London is gone, my name is gone.
There’s just the nerve and the rhythm and Celyn’s hips and the smudged lipstick and I come apart and the world’s here and I’m here and the ceiling has the crack and the lamp’s on and I’m Ronan Carrick and none of that changed.
Celyn pulls out, slow, careful, the same care as going in. I feel the drag of it, the empty after, the ache settling in low and new. The condom off, tied, gone towards the bin. A miss tonight. Neither of us moves to fix it.
I’m on my back and I can’t make my arms work. The ceiling. The crack. My chest going like I’ve run for a train. Lube everywhere, the sheet’s ruined, my thighs shaking with something that isn’t cold, the ache of them still in me, and I’ve never in my life been this far from in charge of a room.
Celyn comes down beside me. Doesn’t say you alright. Doesn’t make it a thing. Just a hand flat on my sternum, over the heartbeat, waiting for it to come down.
My calf cramps. The muscle locking, sudden, and I swear and stretch the foot and Celyn laughs, low, and the laugh undoes the last knot of it.
‘There he is,’ Celyn says.
‘Shut up.’
‘Cramp. Very romantic.’
‘Shut up.’ But I’m half-laughing and the ceiling’s blurred at the edges and I let it.
Celyn gets up. The walk to the bathroom, the tap, the cloth.
Comes back and cleans me up like it’s nothing, between my legs, the mess of it, the most ordinary thing in the flat, and I let that happen too, lie there and let someone’s hands do the job my hands would normally do.
The cloth warm. The care in it. Twenty-seven years being the one who fixes the room.
Tonight I’m the one being put back together and I haven’t got the will to stop it.
Celyn drops the cloth, gets in beside me, pulls the duvet over us both. My arm goes round on its own. The hair under my chin. The stubble against my collarbone, two days of it, the thing that doesn’t match the dress in a heap on the floor.
‘You went quiet,’ Celyn says. Into my chest.
‘Yeah.’
‘Good quiet or bad quiet.’
The site that left my head. The name that left my head. The hands that finally had nothing to carry.
‘Don’t know yet.’
‘Fair.’ The hand on my ribs. ‘You don’t have to.’
Nothing changed.
Everything changed.
Morning, the alarm.
I get up. Shower, the water too hot.
Boots. Polo. Hi-vis. Hat. The order matters because if I go in the wrong order I’ll have to think and I’m not thinking. Hands find the buttons and the laces and the bag.
Don’t look at the bed.
I look at the bed. Celyn’s asleep. The hair on the pillow. The makeup smudged. The dress on the floor. The lace on the floor. Last night in pieces on the floor of a flat in Manchester, and I’m putting on a polo to go pour concrete.
I lock the flat, walk, five minutes. Boots on gravel.
Same hands, east wall, drill. Kenny, Callum, morning briefing.
Under the polo, on the shoulder, the lipstick stays. Nobody sees it. I feel it all day. The mouth-shaped mark. Lace and earrings and held me down and took me apart and is making toast in my flat right now. None of this has a name. The toast’s burning.
The pour that needs checking. The level in my hand.
The walk to the pub takes twelve minutes. I know because I count, not the minutes, the steps: the boots on the pavement and the rhythm of walking.
Seven hundred and something, past the barber’s, past the Turkish place.
Past the bar, the lights on, the table visible through the window, the shape of someone bent over a laptop that isn’t Celyn because Celyn’s at the restaurant tonight.
Someone else sits at the table and uses the wifi and doesn’t know the table belongs to us and the thought, us, the table belongs to us, and my ribs close around it. Trapped.
Under my polo, the mark. Faded, the smudge barely there after two showers. The bruise underneath, the shape of a mouth.
Thomas. Keep it separate. The lad’s got a wife and three kids and a Range Rover on finance, a life that fits. Mine doesn’t, and that’s his problem with it, not mine. He said it out loud and it landed like he aimed it. He aimed it.
The two lads from before come back into my head. The held hands. The thing Dad would clock at fifty paces and the word he wouldn’t say but his face would.
Don’t think about Dad.
Ewan’ll be there in eight minutes. Ewan’ll read me through the door. Mark or no mark, Ewan’ll know. He’s been waiting to know.
The pub’s on Oldham Street. The pub is ours, mine and Ewan’s. The carpet, the draught. The neutral ground where brothers can sit and say things they wouldn’t say in kitchens.
Two Guinness, the foam still settling, the table by the window where nobody sits because the draught comes through the frame. He sits there on purpose, says he likes the cold. The cold matters to him.
‘You look like shite,’ he says.
‘Cheers.’
‘No, properly. When did you last sleep?’
I don’t answer that, pick up the pint. The first sip that tastes like nothing because the mouth’s too dry. The second sip that tastes like Guinness.
‘I’m sleeping fine.’
Ewan does the thing with his face. The one where he doesn’t believe you and doesn’t bother pretending he does. Got that from Mum. The mouth stays flat but the eyes go somewhere else. A place where your bullshit doesn’t reach.
‘Right.’
The pub’s half-empty, Thursday. A couple by the bar arguing about whose round it is, the telly on mute. Football, European, two teams I don’t care about. The carpet’s got that sticky thing, the kind where your boots peel off it when you shift and the sound is loud enough to hear across the room.
‘Jay and Thomas,’ I say.
Don’t plan to say it. Just. Comes out, like coughing, the pint goes down. Jay and Thomas between us.
Ewan doesn’t move. The Guinness in his hand. The posture doesn’t change but something else does. Tightens, enough.
‘What about them.’
‘They moved tables. In the portacabin. Lunch. Didn’t say why. Just. Got up and moved.’
‘Right.’
‘And Thomas. After. Came up to me at the block stack and said “no offence, Ron, but I don’t want to hear about it.” Said keep it separate.’
Ewan puts the pint down. Slow. Places it on the mat like the mat matters.
‘And you said?’
‘Asked him why Gaz gets to talk about his bird for twenty minutes.’
‘Good.’
‘He didn’t have an answer.’
‘They never do.’
Pub, draught, telly on. Ewan’s hands flat on the table, the long fingers, clean, the nails short. Laurence’s influence. The Ewan I grew up with had bitten nails and a nervous knee. This one’s still. Anchored in something. Someone.
‘You want me to say it gets easier,’ Ewan says.
I look at him.
‘Does it?’
‘No.’ He picks up the pint again. Drinks. ‘You get better at not caring.’
Ewan’s been hearing it since he was thirteen. I’ve been hearing it for a month and already the sound of it is everywhere.
‘It’s not what they said.’ My hands on the glass. The condensation. ‘The first thing I thought was dad.’
Ewan’s face. The eyes that go very quiet. The brother eyes. The ones from when we were kids and I’d done something stupid and he’d look at me like that and decide whether to tell Mum.
He doesn’t tell Mum, he never did.
‘Ron.’ Quiet. The pub noise around us but his voice underneath it, close. ‘You’re falling in love with someone and the thing you’re worried about is what people think of you.’
Guinness. Foam. Sticky carpet. Draught from the window.
‘I’m not falling.’
‘Ron.’ He leans forward. The elbows on the table. The face closer. I know this face. This is the face from when he was thirteen and said I need to tell you something and I held it and carried it and never put it down and now the weight is reversed.
‘I watched you not-look at a person for six months. I watched you move cities. I watched you sit at that table every night and pretend you were there for the beer.’ A pause. The pub. The telly. ‘You’re in love. The only person who doesn’t know is you.’