Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The doorbell rang, and Owen glanced at the wall clock. Ten-thirty.
Someone had a lie-in.
Except he already knew Matt better than that. He’d wager the younger man had been awake for hours. If anything had delayed him, it would be work, not sleep.
He crossed the hallway and opened the front door.
Matt stood on the step holding a cake tin. “Mum’s been baking.”
Owen beamed. “I thought I caught the whiff of something delicious when I opened the window this morning.” He sniffed. “Damn, that smells good.”
“She made flapjacks.” Matt held out the tin. “She said something about you probably forgetting to eat while unpacking.” He smirked. “She also said she doubted your sweet tooth had disappeared in thirty years.”
He snorted. “Your mother’s memory is way too good.” He took the tin. “Well, I’m not going to say no. Come in, you’re just in time. I was about to make more coffee.”
Matt stepped inside, slipping off his trainers in the hallway as though he’d already decided this was somewhere he could make himself at home.
Owen liked that.
Matt’s face was suddenly a little tighter. “Are we okay?”
He frowned. “Of course we’re okay. Why wouldn’t we be?”
Matt let out a breath. “Good.”
Then it clicked.
“Although…” Owen drew out the word in a teasing tone.
“Here it comes.”
Owen’s lips twitched. “I may mention Summer Rain once or twice over the next few years.”
Matt groaned. “I was afraid of that.”
“Ooh, be afraid. Be very afraid.”
He burst out laughing. “Film quotes? Don’t get me started. It was one of my favourite things to do with my uni mate, Eric, a sort of competition as to who could recognise the most.”
Owen chuckled. “I’m going to bet you won every time.”
Matt’s eyes sparkled. “Yup. And yes to the coffee, by the way.” He stepped past him, and Owen noticed something he’d somehow failed to register until now.
Matt was dressed for the heat.
His dark teal shorts stopped well above the knee, showing strong calves and thighs browned by the early summer sun. A faded grey T-shirt clung comfortably to broad shoulders that looked as though they belonged in a gym rather than on a body stuck behind a laptop writing a dissertation. Bare feet.
All in all, it was simple, practical, and extremely appropriate for another day of unpacking.
Owen frowned inwardly. So why am I suddenly noticing?
Because yesterday he’d stopped thinking of Matt as Jeff’s son.
The thought arrived uninvited, and just as quickly, Owen pushed it away.
Then he realised Matt was very quiet. Owen glanced across to where he stood.
Matt was smiling. “You’re staring.”
Owen blinked.
“Sorry.” He returned Matt’s smile. “I was trying to work out how someone who spends his life studying has better arms than I do.”
It wasn’t entirely untrue.
Matt laughed. “The result of years in the uni gym.”
“Clearly.”
He looked Owen up and down. “You’re not doing too badly yourself.”
Owen’s chest tightened.
He cleared his throat. “Flattery before coffee. That’s a dangerous tactic.” He went about the practical task of setting up the coffee machine.
Matt leaned against the fridge. “Sorry I was late. I put a few hours into my dissertation this morning. That way I don’t spend the rest of the day feeling guilty.”
“How’s it coming?”
“Pretty well. As long as I don’t lose sight of the question I’m actually trying to answer.”
Owen glanced over his shoulder. “Which is?”
“How did British films between 1945 and 1980 teach audiences what it meant to be a man?”
That caught Owen’s attention. “That’s a bigger question than I was expecting.”
Matt grinned. “My supervisor said exactly the same thing.”
Owen filled the water reservoir. “So where do you even begin with something like that?”
“I ignore the obvious stuff. I’m not interested in action heroes or James Bond. I’m more interested in ordinary men, and the expectations films put on them.”
“Such as?”
“Stoicism, for one. Why post-war men rarely expressed emotion. The whole stiff upper lip thing. Duty before feelings. How grief was hidden instead of shared.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Fathers and sons. Class. What counted as strength. There’s even a chapter on sexuality.”
Owen looked up. “Oh?”
Matt nodded. “How queer men were invisible for decades. How men who didn’t fit the mould were coded as different, or dangerous, or tragic. Then how that slowly changed, and homosexuality became something films could actually talk about.”
Owen was quiet for a moment. “I’d like to read that.”
Matt blinked. “Really?”
“Very much.” He glanced at the tin. “Okay, enough talk. There are flapjacks shouting at me to eat them.”
Matt grinned as he popped the lid. “Then don’t let me stop you.”
By the time they wandered into the lounge, Owen had eaten two.
Matt surveyed the room. “You’ve been busy. Most of the boxes are gone.”
“I got all the DVDs on the shelves, then I made a start on the books.” He snorted. “Only, I think they multiply like rabbits whenever I turn my back.” He gave a weary huff. “I swear I unpack one box and two more appear to take its place.”
“Does that mean I’m working in the garden today?” Matt’s mouth curved into a smile. “You know, what you actually employed me to do?”
Owen coughed. “Not exactly.” He crooked his finger.
“Follow me. That’s if you don’t mind walking on the patio in bare feet.
” He led Matt through the open window, then turned left.
“This is the garden room.” It was a large square room, furnished with a long wide couch and several comfortable armchairs, furniture whose eventual location Owen hadn’t decided on.
“I haven’t seen inside this one.” Matt peered through the window, then froze. “Scrap what I said. There are more boxes in there.” He turned to stare at Owen. “You’re going to need more bookcases. There must be at least thirty.”
Owen opened the patio door and stepped inside. “These don’t contain DVDs or books. These are all photos.”
So many photos, so many memories.
The boxes weren’t big, thank God, about the size of a modern day shoe box, and they were stacked against the wall behind the couch.
Owen pulled the couch out to give them easier access, and Matt went over to the nearest box. He pulled the flaps open and laughed. “Boots? The chemist?”
“Boots was the place to get camera film processed, I’ll have you know.” Owen reached into the box and removed a paper wallet. “I bet Jeff has loads of these all over the house.”
“Correction—he did. Then I used my flatbed scanner and digitised all of them.”
Owen stared. “Seriously? How long did that take?”
“Not as long as you might think, once I got into a rhythm.” Matt widened his eyes. “I could do the same thing for you.”
Owen’s mouth fell open. “You have no idea what you’re offering. There are hundreds, if not thousands.”
Matt gave a shrug. “Look, I have the equipment. It might take me a week if I do them in the evenings. I’d set up my laptop and scanner on the dining table, and you could feed me.” It sounded like a perfectly sensible arrangement.
The fact that he immediately liked the idea rather more than he probably should have was something he chose not to examine.
Owen glanced at him for a moment. “Do you know how few people volunteer to spend a week sorting through someone else’s memories?”
Matt smiled. “Probably because most people don’t have your memories.”
Owen laughed. “I’ll think about it.”
He took a closer look at the boxes. “You numbered them?”
Owen nodded. “They’re in chronological order. I started taking photos in 1990. One box equals one year.”
“Very impressive organisation.”
He snorted. “That’s not what Callum called it. Something about me being anal?”
Matt laughed. “I’m saying nothing.” He glanced at the boxes. “So which one has my parents?”
“Start with number three.”
Matt located it, pulled it aside, and reached into it. He removed a wallet and searched through it. Sure enough, there were photos of his parents.
A lot of photos, most of them showing Mum and Dad smiling or laughing. Mum’s hair seemed even more blonde, and she wore it in a ponytail.
“Oh my God. Dad with more hair.”
Owen snorted. “Mock not. It’ll come to you one day.”
Matt recognised Cyn too, her auburn hair much longer in those days. Then he frowned.
“Why can’t I find any photos of you?”
“I was usually behind the camera.”
Matt scanned the boxes. “I’d like to see photos of Ben. If that’s okay.” He was curious to put a face to the name.
Owen smiled. “That’s fine.” He went over to a box labelled #26. “Try this one.”
Matt pulled out a wallet and rifled through. He stopped at a photo of a man with dark brown eyes, his hair swept up off his face, his beard streaked with silver, matching the threads of it visible on his head and at the temples. It was a kind face.
“Is this him?”
Owen joined him, gazing at the photo. “Yeah, that’s Ben. This was 2014, and he was forty-four. In fact, that was the first photograph I ever took of him.”
Matt sifted through more until he came to one that stopped him in his tracks. It was of Owen and Ben. Owen was laughing, his head thrown back, eyes closed, and Ben was gazing at him instead of the camera.
“Who took this?”
“Callum. He was just sixteen at the time. I always thought this was an excellent photo.”
Matt studied it. “Ben really loved you.”
Owen stilled. “You see that too?”
He nodded. “He’s looking at you as if you were the best thing he’d ever found.”
Owen went quiet.
Matt glanced at him. “Have I said something wrong?”
His smile was a little sad. “Not at all. It’s just that… well, nobody has ever described Ben’s love like that.” He paused. “The year after that, he proposed, and I said yes in a heartbeat.”
“This should be in a frame, in the lounge.” It belonged there. Then Matt gazed at the paper wallets in the box. “Hang on… Why do these stop being envelopes from Boots and suddenly become packets from Tesco?”
“Because almost every independent photo lab in Britain disappeared overnight.”
The penny dropped. “Digital cameras?”