Dog Roses - Chapter Twenty-Five + Epilogue

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Matthew was sprawled on the sofa, bare feet dangling over one arm, watching an old movie on TV. He did not speak, shift his position even slightly or take his eyes off the screen as I approached. “Matthew?” But he continued to stare at the black and white figures with a glazed expression.

     If I hadn’t known what to expect when I finally found Matthew, I thought I was at least prepared for whatever recriminations or hurt feelings he might throw at me. Certainly, I was ready to say and do just about anything to win him back. I guessed he would be angry, possibly unforgiving. But this blank wall of indifference took me completely by surprise. “Matthew?” I tried again.

     He did not stir a muscle.

     I could only stand there, feeling horribly self-conscious, in an agony of despair and growing increasingly desperate. My only comfort was the knowledge that he had taken the trouble to let me in. Had he done so just to punish me? If so, he couldn’t have chosen a more effective means.

     “Matthew, please, I’m sorry.” I blurted and even to my own ears it sounded like a cry from the heart.

     He did not so much as indicate that he’d heard.

     My eyes followed his to the TV screen where Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon were acting out a scene from Wuthering Heights. The stirring soundtrack, a love theme, struck me as both splendidly appropriate and hideously incongruous at the same time. It was one of my mother’s favourite movies so I recognized the finale where Heathcliff braves a terrible storm on Haworth Moor to go in search of his true love, Cathy, whose voice he hears calling to him. They are reunited, but only in death. I’d always thought it a soppy story until now. As I watched the drama unfold, I found myself incredibly moved, and made a mental note never to tease my mother for crying buckets over it again.

     Well, I damn well wasn’t going to wait until Matthew and I were ghosts! I went to the television and turned it off.

     “Hey, I was watching that!” Matthew cried in a fury.

     “We need to talk.” I said quietly.

     “Oh, yeah, and what’s the point of that when you never listen? Now, turn the TV back on.”

     “The movie’s finished.”

     “So are we.”

     “You don’t mean that.”

     “Are you going to turn the TV back on or am I?”

     “We need to talk,” I repeated. Matthew leapt up from the sofa and lunged at me. Seconds later we were tussling on the carpet. “Get off me!” I yelled. “I didn’t come here for a fight.”

     “So why did you come?” He had me pinioned to the floor.

     “To explain…” I panted weakly.

     “Explain what? There’s nothing to explain. I’m the bad guy. You’re the good guy. Good guy tells bad guy to fuck off. End of story.”

     “No!” I wailed miserably, “I need to explain. It could just as easily be my fault we’re...” I let my voice trail off into a void.

     “That’s encouraging to hear,” Matthew responded icily but slackening his grip slightly.

     “You don’t understand. Billy Mack was...Well, it could be that he was HIV positive. In which case…”

     “That could make him the bad guy and, by default, you too…” Matthew murmured flatly.

     I nodded, not trusting myself to say another word.  He got up, returned to the sofa and sat down again. “I had no idea…” I forced my lips to move. “I had no idea,” I repeated.

     “That’s okay then,” Matthew murmured with a shrug. Nor did the expression that met my pleading gaze convey any hint as to what he might be either thinking or feeling.

     I got slowly, shakily, to my feet. “I know I’ve behaved badly and I wouldn’t blame you if you can’t forgive me. But at least hear me out. Please, Matthew, I need to tell you things…”

     “I know the feeling.”

     “I know and I’m so sorry. I should have heard you out. I guess I haven’t the right to expect you to do the same for me.”

     “You’re right there, Rob, dead right.”

     I winced at the bitterness that had crept into both his voice and expression. “I’ll go.” I headed for the door, glad of an excuse to look away.

     “Giving up so soon? Running away? Why am I not surprised?” he flung at me.

     I barely hesitated before rounding on him and letting rip with a burst of pent-up indignation, anger, hurt pride and self-recrimination. “Okay, so I got it wrong, as usual. But I came here to try and put things right. I know I’m a bastard.  I don’t need you and everyone else to keep rubbing my nose in it! Yes I’ve made mistakes, but who doesn’t? At least I’m trying to learn from them, damn you. Okay, blame me for everything. Billy and I had unprotected sex and there’s every reason to suspect he may have infected me with the damn virus. But he wouldn’t have knowingly hurt me for the world any more than I would knowingly have hurt you. Because he loved me, just as I love you. Yes, I love you. I don’t expect you to love me after everything that’s happened between us. But that doesn’t mean I can’t love you because I do, I do.”

     I began to sob although no tears fell.

     Suddenly, I felt drained of all emotion but an overwhelming love and need for this man, this stranger, passing through me like a murmuring stream that expects to come to a river only to become lost in its magnitude.

     My legs gave way. I collapsed on a chair. Matthew continued to sit stock still, apparently unmoved. I summoned an inner strength and tried again. “I don’t blame you. Not for anything.”

     “I should think not,” he retorted, “after what you’ve just told me.”

     “So where do we go from here?”

     “We…? So it’s ‘we’ now is it?”

     I longed to get up and walk out, but my legs wouldn’t let me. I sighed. “I know I’ve hurt you and I’m sorry. What more can I say?”

     “Not a lot.”

     “So tell me you don’t love me any more and I’ll go,” I said without thinking. My heart missed a beat. I hadn’t meant to be quite so direct.

     Matthew remained tight-lipped. From somewhere I found the energy to get to my feet and walk across the room. I was poised to open the door when he called me back. “Not so fast. We can’t leave it like this. Okay, you’re sorry. So am I. But saying sorry doesn’t let either of us off the hook does it?”

     I retraced my steps and forced myself to look him in the eye. “I…”

     “Sit down and shut up. You’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn.”  Meekly, I did as I was told. “Can you live with this HIV thing?”

     I hadn’t expected the question and was momentarily flummoxed. It was one I had asked of myself more then once, of course, only to push it aside rather than even try to formulate an answer. “Do either of us have a choice?” I countered and tried to adopt a breezy air, but only succeeded in sounding petulant even to my own ears. “Yes, I think so,” I murmured cautiously, and then with a growing confidence that surprised me, “Yes, I can live with it. It isn’t the death sentence it used to be, after all. Drugs can control and suppress it for years. There are new antivirals coming out all the time. One day, they’re sure to find a cure. Meanwhile… I know the immune system is vulnerable to whatever nature might throw at it but, yes, I can live with it.  Let’s face it. We take our lives in our hands whenever we cross the road these days, not to mention some mugger sticking a knife in or shooting at us. Okay, AIDS is a real threat, not an unlikely scenario. But there’s a whole lot of living to do, and I say we do just that. Only, I need you, Matthew. I can’t do this on my own. You know, united we stand, divided we fall and all that stuff. ” I managed a weak grin.

     “Do you honestly believe we can beat this thing?”

     “We…?” I swallowed hard, scarcely daring to hope.

     For the first time since I had entered the room, Matthew smiled. “To answer your question...” He sighed. “No, I can’t tell you I don’t love you.”

     “Does that mean…?”

     “It means we’re a couple of bloody fools who might just get away with loving one another for a good while yet if we’re lucky.”

     “Do you mean that?”

     “I said so didn’t I?”

     Of one accord, we jumped up and fell into each other’s arms. For a long time we just hugged. When he finally kissed me, it was like coming back into the light after an interminable period underground. His warmth, his smell, the pressure of his lips on mine, they were all I wanted and more.

     “We’ll be okay,” I murmured with conviction before he kissed me again and we headed for the bedroom. It was a sure, instinctive move, without any of the eagerness for sex that had prompted us on previous occasions. Oh, sex was part of it and we both wanted it. But this time it was all so different. This time, I felt as though I was part of something much, much bigger than either of us, something that was beautiful and would last, no matter that we were HIV positive.

     We were feverishly undressing each other when he asked me out of the blue, Will you marry me?”

     I stared. “What?”

     “Well, we can go for a civil partnership. A rose by any other name and all that…”

     “I…” My head began to spin. 

     His excited expression ebbed before my eyes as did the passion in his voice. “I see. You love me, but not enough to make a commitment. Why is that Rob? Afraid of what people might say?”

    “No. I do love you.” I fumbled in vain for the right words to describe my mixed emotions.

    “But…?” He laughed. It was a horrible, guttural sound that cut me to the quick. “There aren’t any buts, Rob. You love someone all the way or not at all. Oh, there are ups and down. Everyone has those. No buts though, not where love is concerned.  If you’re afraid of commitment, we’re finished before we even get started.”

     “You’re practically in the closet,” I accused him angrily. “A civil ceremony won’t go down too well at school.”

     He shrugged. “They can take it or leave it. I can’t be sacked for being gay. If it’s hard work winning some people over, so be it. I can do it if I have you to come home to after a bad day.” He grinned but not with amusement. “So how about it, will you marry me? I’m game if you are.”

     I desperately wanted to say, yes. But, like a fool, I said nothing. I pleaded with my eyes for more time to think about it. Matthew either misread their message or chose to ignore it.

     “I think you had better go Rob,” he said quietly, his eyes filled with tears.

     I dressed in a daze and barely remember leaving that room or even descending the steps from the front door below. But I will never forget how the ground rolled beneath my feet like the deck of a ship in a raging storm as I staggered along, despairing at my own stupidity, desperate for comfort and for someone to tell me why it was I couldn’t, for the life of me, put into words a commitment to love wrapped so tightly around my heart it was killing me.

     Naturally enough, my feet took me in the direction of Lou Devlin whom I knew was staying temporarily with her parents. True, I was anxious for news about Shaun. (I had forgotten about the baby). Even so, everything said and done, it was but an excuse.

     Haunting images began to flood my mind. Try as I might, they would not go away. Already unsteady of my feet, I felt as if I were floundering in a quagmire of sorts. Nightmarish flashes of smoke and flame passed before my eyes. The smell of burning flesh filled my nostrils, so much so that I had to pause and sit on a low wall until a nasty coughing fit had passed.

     Poor, sweet Ben, the best friend I never deserved. Gone, snuffed out like a candle. ”It’s not fair!” I cried aloud.  Even to my cloth ears, the simile had a poetic if hollow ring. I clenched my fists. There was no poetry in burning to death, only terror, agony and waste.

     I couldn’t bear it.

     What have I done to deserve this, I kept asking myself? At the same time, I also kept avoiding the obvious answer. Who had failed family, friends and lover? I had only myself to blame. Self-pity overwhelmed me.

      I wept. Silently, my tears fell, hot and wet, from eyes that had stayed dry far too long. Dimly, I was aware of people giving me strange looks. I didn’t care. Fiercely, relentlessly, I cried for them all; for Mum, Dad, Paul, Ma B, old Bananas, and last but not least for Matthew. (Dear God, what have I done?) I thought my heart would break.

     I shed no tears for Billy Mack. There was no need. Somehow, things had come right between Billy and me.

     Mostly, I have to confess, I cried for myself.

     I wasn’t aware of anyone sitting beside me until an arm laid itself around my shoulders and lightly squeezed. “I’m sorry,” Mathew murmured to a crack in the paving stone at his feet, “I must have sounded like a pompous ass back there. I had no right to ask you to marry me and then get on my high horse because you wouldn’t give me an answer right away. I can wait. And there are other ways of making a commitment. We can still live happy ever after. We don’t have to make it legal.”

     “I want to,” I sobbed.

     “Live happy ever after? Me too….” Another squeeze dragged my thoughts into focus.

     “I want to marry you.” I forced a laugh, “Well, a civil partnership anyway. Like you said, a rose by any other name…”

     “Do you mean it?” His face radiated delight and disbelief.

     I nodded, still crying. He released me, got to his feet, swept me up in a bear hug and swung me round till I felt literally dizzy with happiness. “I’m soaking your shirt,” I remarked ruefully.

     We both burst out laughing.

     Suddenly, he stopped. His expression grew serious. He deposited me on the wall and sat beside me, holding my hand. I waited patiently, anticipating a philosophical diatribe worthy of Shakespeare. "I would have come after you anyway,” he began, “but when I opened the front door, your friend Maggie was just about to ring the bell…” He paused and I saw he was excruciatingly uncomfortable.

     My blood ran cold. “Go on…” I prompted hoarsely. For I already knew what he was going to say.  A single word had stuck in my throat like a fishbone. “Shaun?” I managed to whisper.

     “He died this afternoon. I’m so, so, sorry. I know how close the two of you were…” he went on. But I was past hearing, past even feeling for a while.

     “No!” I protested at last and collapsed against Matthew’s heaving chest. Glad of his arms tightening around me, I was helpless to stop an unbearable hurt welling up inside me until it overflowed, tossing me on huge waves of grief and loss, taunting me with my own mortality, forcing me to confront my own insignificance in a universal pattern of events unfolding into infinity...

     Later, we visited Lou together.

     It was Lou’s mum who opened the door to us. A dumpy little woman with a shy smile, she showed us into a brightly lit sitting room. My first impression was that it was somewhat crowded. My wandering gaze took in a tall bespectacled man I knew to be Lou’s father, who was already on his feet and came forward to greet us, also a pimply youth with very short hair who remained seated while fidgeting with his hands as if longing to be somewhere else. Maggie was also standing and appeared about to leave, seemingly unconcerned that Ed kept a possessive eye on her every move. Lou sat on the edge of a brown leather sofa that was far too big for the room, offering a pale cheek to Maggie’s bold red mouth. Both women looked pleased to see us and Lou rose to make the introductions on Matthew’s account although I, too, had never met the pimply youth who turned out to be her kid brother.

     “How’s the baby?” I asked nervously, wondering why there was no sign of her and fearing more bad news.

     “She’s fine,” Lou assured me, “But she was premature and will need to stay in an incubator for a little while longer. Even so, I’m expecting to bring her home any day now. She’s beautiful.” She hesitated before adding, “I’m going to call her Shauna after her Dad.”

     I swallowed, but could not dislodge a lump in my throat. “Oh, Lou, I’m so, so, sorry….”

     We embraced.

     “I’m glad you two have made it up,” murmured Lou to Matthew over my shoulder.

     “So am I,” said Maggie, “Maybe now, Rob, you’ll be a damn sight easier to live with.”

     Everyone laughed. If the sound rang a little hollow, it also carried a ring of truth, as if Shaun was determined to make his approval as well as his presence felt amongst us.

     “I’ll make sure of that,” Matthew told her with a broad smile.

     “Be sure you do,” Maggie responded with a flicker of the old mischief in her grey-green eyes.

     “I wish…” I began but Lou laid a finger on my lips.

     “What’s done is done. Shaun will always be in our hearts and we must settle for that.” She smiled, radiating warmth and happiness that was as inspirational as it was comforting. “Wait until you see Shauna.  It’s just amazing how much she looks like her Dad. So you see, a part of Shaun will live on for real as well.”

     What could I say?

     “Can I offer you both a sherry or perhaps you’d prefer a beer? I’m sure there are a few cans left in the fridge.” Mr Simmons’s low baritone created a welcome diversion.

     “A sherry would be nice,” Matthew spoke for us both and I was grateful for that, even though I had no great liking for the stuff.

     Matthew and I were directed to the huge sofa where we perched self-consciously on the edge. The brother finally made up his mind to leave the room and did so without a word to anyone. Maggie and Ed sat down beside us while Lou resumed her position on the arm.

     After a few minutes, Mrs Simmons followed her son while the husband engaged Matthew and me in polite conversation. When Maggie announced that she and Ed had to go, it was tantamount to being rescued. Arthur Simmons promptly gave the pair his full attention.

     “I’ll see you both out,” said Lou and gave her father’s arm a squeeze as if to say, “I’m okay. I can do this.”  The tall man looked relieved and went to pour himself another sherry.

     I caught Matthew’s eye and we, too, rose to leave. Soon, all five of us had crammed into the little hallway. Ed and I found each other rubbing shoulders. I stuck out my hand, feeling more than a trifle ridiculous. He took it but looked slightly away rather than directly at me, the firmness of his grip belying the rush of colour to his face. “Thanks for saving my life,” I muttered.

     “Bullshit.” Ed frowned. “If you hadn’t found me when you did I’d have been in no state to save myself let alone anyone else

     “Quits then?” I suggested.

     “Quits,” he agreed with an uncharacteristically shy smile.

     “Thank heavens for that!” exclaimed Maggie. Both she and Lou were smiling broadly. “Another word about who saved whom and I’d have thumped you Ed Mack.”

     “Now maybe the pair of you can be friends?” Lou suggested in a tone that spoke volumes.

      Ed and I exchanged wary glances. “I thought we were.” His gruff rejoinder caught me off guard and I suspect my face betrayed me. Before I could frame a suitable reply, though, he was all but pushing Maggie through the front door and it had closed behind them.

     “How can she even think of…?” I began, and then thought better of it.

     But Lou had read my thoughts. “Marrying Clive? Who knows? I wouldn’t mind betting even Maggie doesn’t know the answer to that one.”

     “She’s okay, that Maggie,” I found myself saying.

     “Yes,” Lou agreed warmly, “Maggie’s okay.”

     After we had said our goodbyes and were on our way back to the flat, Matthew remarked with some feeling, “She’s quite a woman, Louise.”

     I started. I had only ever heard Shaun call her that. Matthew was right, of course, and I experienced a stab of guilt for ever having gone along with the old “Loopy” Lou tag.

    Shaun. A dull ache spread through my whole body. I missed him so much already that I barely noticed Matthew slipping a hand into mine as we walked along the busy street.

EPILOGUE

Matthew and I attended all four funerals. Baz Pearce and Liz Daniels were cremated, their ashes later scattered where a tree was planted in Forty Acres wood in their memory. Ben Hallas and Sean were

buried in local churchyards.

     Each funeral was unique, but shared a common sense of celebration that was at once uplifting and heartrending.

     Of them all, the most harrowing for me was Shaun’s. Nor could I keep thinking how old his poor mother looked; that is, until she caught me watching her and smiled. The ravaged face became instantly transformed and I saw the same Nancy Devlin who had once taken me to her bed. I smiled back. Although I was comfortable with being gay, I would always be grateful to Nancy for that time when, as a troubled teen, I had struggled so with my sexual identity. Our brief exchange meant the world to me that day. Somehow I got through the service and burial without falling apart. Would I ever tell Matthew about Nancy, I wondered? I suppressed a chuckle. Nor did it strike me as incongruous that I should be entertaining these thoughts at such a time. Sean had, after all, always been good for a laugh.

     Six weeks later, some of us gathered at the same church to witness the christening of baby Shauna. I was a proud godfather, Maggie and Nancy godmothers. Nancy positively glowed and I had to choke back the tears. Maggie, too, looked radiant but more than a little uncomfortable as well, although that may have had something to do with the fact that both Clive and Ed were among the congregation.

     It was another twelve months before Matthew and I had our civil ceremony. It was a lively, happy occasion and timed to coincide with the re-opening of The Connie, scheduled for the next day. I had mixed feeling about a having reception there but any misgivings proved unfounded. Everyone had a whale of a time.  If there were ghosts, I like to think they enjoyed themselves too.

     Afterwards, Matthew and I drove to Forty Acres.

     The wood had already sprung vibrantly alive again after a long winter. I recalled that time I had come here with Sean and how proud he’d been to tell me he was going to marry Lou and how, in turn, I had felt so thrilled at being asked to be his best man. I sighed. So much had happened since then. Oh, those who survived had moved on and we would continue to do so. But nothing could ever be quite the same again. By comparison, the wood was much as it has always been for hundreds of years. I chuckled, remembering those far off days of childhood and innocence when we had played at outlaws, probably on this very spot, Sean Devlin, Ben Hallas, Baz Pearce and me. And I the only one left to tell the tale. It was a sobering thought.

     We sat on a log, a watery sun lukewarm on the back of our necks, Matthew and I, absently watching dead leaves floating on Caitlin’s pond. Above our heads, a budding sky promised a fine spring. Neither of us spoke. We felt no need for words. (Hadn’t we said enough for one day, promised ourselves to each other?)

I continued to rummage among not-so-distant memories without feeling sad, only glad to have them to fall back on.

     All around us, birds were chirruping noisily and leaves were dripping pretty rainbows.  Glancing up, I saw hazy circles around the sun and was reminded of a potter’s wheel I’d once struggled to master at school. I had so wanted to make a vase for my mother, but had only succeeded in producing a messy dollop of clay to which I hadn’t given a thought in years. Suddenly, it became absurdly important to me that I should make that vase. A course of evening classes perhaps?

      I spotted some dog roses in a patch of weeds, wondered how they had managed to grow there and was filled with admiration.

     “Come on. We can’t hang around here. There are a whole lot of things we need to make a start on,” Matthew declared and leapt to his feet, hauling me up with him.

     Oh, how I love this place.  I groaned inaudibly. Yet, if reluctant to leave, I was content enough to go along with the hand tugging resolutely at mine. There would be other times...
     Matthew was right. There were a whole lot of things we needed to make a start on, not least a whole new way of life...together. 

The End

[Note: In a few days, I will post the synopsis for a new serial, Like There’s No Tomorrow. Chapter 1 will appear shortly.]

Dog Roses - Chapter Twenty-Four

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I was still brooding about my mother’s wedding and how it would affect my living arrangements when Paul walked into the room.

“Oh, you’re back then?” was my brother’s opening gambit on his way to the fridge.

“Don’t worry, I’m no ghost,” I growled without thinking. He visibly winced and the profile turned towards me turned a shade pale. “Sorry,” I muttered, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“No?” came the surly response as he helped himself to a can of coke. I half expected him to flounce out of the room in a huff. Instead, to my surprise, he pulled up a chair and sat opposite me. “I suppose they told you the good news,” he said, voice heavy with sarcasm, before snapping the can open and taking a swig.

“By ‘they’ I take it you mean Mum and Peter?”

“So what do you reckon?” Paul insisted, ignoring my implied criticism.

I shrugged. “It was on the cards they would get married.  Good luck to them, I say. They seem happy enough. God knows, life’s too short to let any happiness slip through your fingers.”

“My, aren’t we the little philosopher?” It was my turn to decline the bait. “Is that all you can say? What about Dad?”

“Dad’s dead,” I pointed out not unkindly, “and Mum’s entitled to a life of her own, we all are,” I added gruffly. I hadn’t meant to sound accusing.

“Yeah, well, we all know what kind of a life you want, don’t we?” he muttered and took another swig from the can. Perhaps I was too tired to argue or maybe I was simply past caring, but the jibe at my sexuality didn’t bother me in the least. On the contrary, the thought occurred to me that if Paul had a problem with my being gay, it was his problem, not mine. “You make me sick,” he persisted, “You think you’re so smart, so much better than everyone else. Even in hospital, you couldn’t resist playing the hero and lapping up all the fuss. I can’t think why I bothered to even make an appearance, let alone splash out on bloody grapes.”

“So why did you?” I countered angrily. “If it was such a drag, why didn’t you go for a swim or put in some of your precious training instead?”

“Because…” He reddened, faltered and took refuge again in the can.

“Because..?” I prompted, determined not to let him off the hook. He was plainly spoiling for a fight. Well, he was welcome to one if it would help clear the air between us.

“Because I thought you were dead,” he blurted and tears welled in his eyes, “When I first heard about the fire, I thought…Then, later...Well, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, could I?  First Dad, and now you...I couldn’t bear it. You can be a real pain sometimes, but you’re the only brother I have and…I love you, even if you are...one of them.”

“The word you’re looking for is gay,” I said quietly, “G-A-Y, gay.  It’s a perfectly respectable word. Look it up in the Oxford dictionary if you don’t believe me.

“Whatever.”  He was being surly and crying at the same time.

I surprised myself by saying, “You do know I love you too?”

“Whatever...” He sniffed and took another swig from the can.

“So now we’ve established that we love each other, why can’t we be friends?” I made a wry grimace.

He shrugged, said nothing for a while, and then produced a sheepish expression and offered me the can. I hesitated. He knew I disliked coke. Nor was it with a taste for martyrdom but with genuine relief that I accepted this peace offering at face value. .I drank, and handed it back. Although this mute exchange took only seconds, it spoke volumes for both of us and did much to bridge troubled waters since our father’s death.

“You hate coke!” He spluttered, as if suddenly remembering.

“Needs must as the devil drives,” I replied lightly.

“And I’m the Devil, yeah?” It was said with some heat, but I could see his lips twitching, bursting to break into a grin. I relaxed. We haven’t bantered like this for a long time, I reflected with a heady mix of guilt and pleasure.

“If the cap fits,” I said.

“Yeah, well, it takes one to know one…”

Instinctively, I rose and crossed to his side of the table where he was already on his feet. “Shake on it?”

Solemnly, we shook hands. Suddenly, we were laughing and hugging like old friends who hadn’t seen each other for a long time.

“About your being ‘gay’ and all that, it doesn’t matter. That is, I couldn’t give a toss really. If that’s the way it is, fair enough. I’ve behaved like a complete idiot and, well, I’m sorry.”

“Not half as sorry as you’ll be if you don’t stop standing on my bloody foot!” I pointed out with a mock seriousness that instantly had us convulsed again, the boot crushing my poor toes removed with conscience-stricken alacrity.

“I’ve got things to do,” he mumbled.

“Me too,” I said.

We parted, closer than we had ever been.

Paul left the room and I made a mental note to ask about his exams at the first opportunity. I couldn’t help wondering too how my kid brother would react when I told him I was HIV positive. How would I tell people? Family, friends…How would it change their perception of me? For it would change, surely? People might be living longer with the virus, but its association with AIDS and death was always likely to make those who are virus-free fearful for their own mortality. (Well, wouldn’t it?).

There was only one way to find out.

“First things first,” I told myself. First, I had to find Matthew. But where, how and…what then? I felt like crying and wished I could. But no tears fell. Only a dull ache in my chest spread rapidly through my whole body, weakening every limb until I had to sit down to prevent myself crumbling into a heap on the floor.

Of all the crises tackled at our kitchen table, this had to be the worst. I took deep breaths and gradually my feelings became recognizable. I wasn’t scared now. Well, not of AIDS or dying. I wasn’t even angry any more. It was almost as if I had deposited my worst feelings on a back burner while I contemplated the here and now. Erratic contours of my mind began slowly but surely to shape a resolve to take each day as it comes. At the epicentre, striking every frayed nerve, every nuance of my being, like persistent bolts of lightning, one word continued to flash like a neon sign spelling out M-A-T-T-H-E-W.

When my mother and Short returned, they were bursting with the news that both Crolleys had been arrested and charged with murder. They were plainly surprised at my lack of response. So was I. It barely touched me at all. Muttering some vague excuse, I beat a hasty retreat to my room. Once there, I tried to make sense of how I felt or, rather, how I didn’t feel.

Preoccupied as I was with thoughts of Matthew, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the Crolleys were responsible for several deaths, one of whom had been a close friend, and no inconsiderable injury count.  So why this awful numbness as if I were immersed in ice cold water? It wasn’t even that, but a weird detachment. Nothing could excuse what the Crolleys had done, even the fact that their own father had sexually abused both. That had to count for something, though, surely? 

I searched for signs of pity but there was too thin a line between pity and forgiveness. I couldn’t cross it. Nor did I wish to. It was enough, for now, that justice would be seen to be done on account of those who died.  It would not bring them back though, would it?  The dead never came back. Ben, Baz, Liz and Billy…I would never see them again... or my dad.  At the same time, I felt a breath of wind like the touch of friendly fingers ruffling my hair and glanced dismissively at the partially open window where flowery curtains hung without stirring.

On impulse, I went to a drawer and retrieved Billy’s diary. I sat on the bed and read it from cover to cover. I actually read it. My eyes did not merely home in on certain words, phrases, passages, but looked for meanings to which I could relate and fit into each other, piece by piece, like an emotional jigsaw puzzle. For the first time, Billy talked to me from the heart. Not least, perhaps, because I was ready to listen. 

If I had been obsessed with my own feelings, including my sexuality, I tried to make up for that now. The Billy in these pages, leaping out at me from an untidy scrawl, was and was not the Billy I had known and loved. Neither saint nor sinner, he was, though, someone with whom I could and did lovingly play hide-and-seek among mixed emotions. Nor did passages given over to anguished ruminations about his affair with Nick Crolley affect my overall sentiment. Page after page ‘hearing’ Billy express his love for me more than compensated for any meaningless affair.

One passage said it all: ‘I didn’t know what love was until I met Rob although I don’t think his capacity for love will ever come to fulfilment in me. It doesn’t matter. I just hope that one day he will feel the way I do now. If there is no heaven when we die, that doesn’t matter either because I’ve already been there.’

I bit my lip and felt incredibly humbled even as a surge of gratitude welled in me. Billy Mack had, after all, taught me to listen to my body, learn from it and act on that, unafraid and unashamed. If he had infected me with the HIV virus, and I would never know for sure, I couldn’t blame him for that. It was time to stop playing the blame game. Billy had shown me how to make a start at living my life. The rest was down to me.

A tentative knocking on the door disturbed my reverie. I ignored it. Closing Billy’s diary that I had finished reading some time before, I created a space for it among my books on a shelf beside the bed.

Another knock at the door was a sharp rap that conveyed a sense of urgency.

“Come in!” I called irritably, reluctant to let the outside world undermine this new bond and enhanced understanding that Billy Mack and I had re-established with one another.

t was Peter Short who entered, looking very flustered. This alarmed me somewhat as Peter always struck me as the archetypal librarian, cool, calm, collected, organized… “Look, Rob,” he began uncomfortably, “I know it’s none of my business and your mother doesn’t think I should interfere, but…” He kept shifting his weight from one foot to the other like a man anxious to go to the toilet. In other circumstance, it would have been funny.

“But…?” I prompted.

“But, well, you see…” fidgeting now with buttons on his cardigan, “It’s like this…” he persevered, “On the way home, your mother and I, we…” A button came loose between his fingers.

“For heaven’s sake, man, get on with it!”

“We saw Matthew going into the flat,” he said in a rush, and then, “I thought you should know,” he added lamely. He dropped the button and went down on all fours, groping for it. 

I made no move to help him. My initial excitement was quickly replaced by fear. I went weak at the knees and sank down on the edge of the bed. I began to panic. Sweat was pouring from my brow.

“Here.” Peter was on his feet and offering me a handkerchief. “It’s clean,” he added. I accepted gratefully and mopped my face. He sat down beside me. I wished he would go away and leave me alone. At the same time, I found his presence a comfort of sorts. “Do you want to talk about it?” he suggested at last.

“You don’t want to know,” I muttered.

“Try me. I’d like to help if I can.”

“Well you can’t. No one can. If you must know, I’ve shot myself in the foot and now I’m…”

“Hurting like hell, I imagine,” he suggested gently. I could only nod. “In my experience, foot wounds are treatable,” he murmured wryly.

I rounded on him angrily. “How dare you poke fun at me? You know nothing, nothing! It’s all right for you. You’ve got everything going for you. What the fuck would someone like you know about being…”

      “Being what...?” It was his turn to prompt, and it felt as though he was sticking a knife in my gut and twisting it. 

      I bit my lip and drew blood.  But the pain would not stop. Before I realized it, I was crying out, “I’m HIV positive!” A long silence followed, broken only by the sound of our breathing, mine in rapid spurts and his remarkably even. Out of nowhere, an immense calmness descended and enveloped me in folds of satin that were at once refreshingly cool and smooth against my skin. “I’m HIV positive,” I repeated.

     “I’m sorry,” Short said and laid an arm around my shoulders. I wanted to throw it off but didn’t, perhaps because feeling that I didn’t deserve any comfort made me all the more hungry for it. “Have you told anyone?”

      “A couple of friends know.”

      “Matthew?” I shook my head. “Don’t you think you should tell him?

      "Of course,” I said angrily. “After all, it’s probably me who…” my voice trailed away miserably.

      He’s HIV too?” I nodded. “And you think you may be responsible?” I nodded again.

I heard Short catch his breath.

      “I didn’t know!” I found myself protesting and pleading at the same time, “But that’s no excuse is it?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I accused him of infecting me. I said some terrible, terrible, things. I sent him away.”

      "And now you want him back.” It was not a question.

      “I love him,” I whimpered and was glad of the squeeze at my shoulder.

      “Then you have to tell him that, along with everything else. No holding back, Rob.  You have to let it all out and let him see how you feel.”

      “Suppose he won’t listen? Suppose he sends me away like I did him? Suppose it’s all over between us? I couldn’t face it, I just…couldn’t.”

      “Can you face the way things are now?” I shook my head. “Then you have no choice. I hope the pair of you can work things out, I really do. But sometimes there’s just no telling. All we can do is try our damnedest. Nothing ventured…and all that,” he added with a long sigh. It struck me then how there was an awful lot about Peter Short I didn’t know.

      “I suppose…” was all I trusted myself to say. Short released his hold on me and got to his feet. I felt absurdly abandoned and began to panic again. Then it hit me how Matthew must have felt when I drove him away and I felt physically sick.  Suddenly, an awful thought struck me and I looked up at Short in alarm,    “You won’t tell mum? Please, you mustn’t. I’ll tell her, I promise, when I’m ready.”

      “I won’t say a word. It has to come from you. And don’t let on you talked to me about it first. Not only because she’d feel so hurt either. I’m just not convinced she’d ever quite forgive either of us.”

      “Do you think she’ll forgive me for…this?”

      Short smiled and I thought I saw something of what must have attracted my mother to the man in the first place. “If you have the capacity to love, you have the capacity to forgive. But it’s how you use it that counts.”

      “That’s pretty profound,” I remarked.

      “Even for some dried-up old stick of a librarian?” He chuckled.

      “For a stepdad too,” I said with a grin.

      He flushed with pleasure before turning to go and then, “Whatever happens, Rob, your mother and I will always be there for you.” He went to the door, turned and flung me a wicked smile.  “Go for it, Rob. If the worst comes to the worst, well…” He shrugged, “at least when you’re at rock bottom, the only way to go is up…” Another dry chuckle was still sending ripples across my brain long after he had closed the door firmly behind him.

       I reached for my mobile phone and began to tap out Matthew’s number then stopped and switched the damn thing off so I wouldn’t be tempted again. What I have to say to Matthew needs to be said face to face. Besides, he probably would not have answered. Worse, I might have scared him off. I tried to picture him alone in the flat. What was he doing?  Was he relaxing in an armchair, pacing up and down, watching TV while drowning his sorrows, packing a suitcase…? It was the latter prospect that finally galvanized me into action. I leapt up and ran to the door. Out of the corner of one eye, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the dressing table mirror.  I paused, retraced my steps and confronted the wreck of a face staring back at me as if it were some alien monster.

      A shower, shave and change of clothes later found me heading for the flat with a spring in my step.

      On arrival, though, my feet remained glued to the pavement for some time before eventually climbing a mere four steps to the communal front door, clammy fingers clinging to the handrail for dear life.

      I rang the doorbell. No response. I rang again, but still no response. My heart sunk. Am I too late? I rang again and this time kept my fingers pressed hard against the grubby white plastic.

      Without warning, the door was flung open. A complete stranger stood there, smouldering with open hostility. “What’s your game then, eh?”

      “I’m looking for Matthew. Is he in?”

      “How the hell should I know? Go and see for yourself and make sure you shut the front door behind you,” with which he ran down the steps, grabbed a bicycle leaning against some railings and rode away. I entered the gloomy hallway, shut the door behind me and climbed some stairs. Even as I knocked on Matthew’s door, I was struggling to recall what I had been rehearsing in my head every step of the way. “Matthew, are you there?  It’s me, Rob. I need to talk to you. We need to talk, Matthew, please…”

      I heard noises within. It seemed ages before the door was opened and left ajar. No familiar presence, welcoming or otherwise, filled the doorway. I was left with no choice but to take up the gauntlet. Seizing upon what little self-confidence I could muster, I let my shaky legs carry me into the room.

Dog Roses - Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Why? I kept asking myself, Why Ben, of all people? What was he doing at The Connie anyway? It wasn’t as if he had ever bothered before, so why now?

My mother proceeded to make more choked, sobbing noises.  Yet another surge of guilt coursed through my veins as I realised I must have voiced my tormented thoughts aloud. I started to reach out with my free hand to comfort her, but let it drop.  Comfort, did I say? Some comfort! I groaned inaudibly. What use, comfort? It would not bring Ben back or Baz or Liz or my dad. Oh, how I wished Dad was here! He would know what to say, what to do. All of a sudden I had the strongest sense of his presence and, yes, it was a comfort.

I reached out again and caught my mother’s hand in mine.

“Poor Ben, he came to the house looking for you,” she said after a long, weepy silence, “I saw the message on the pad was gone, the one from Shaun, so suggested he try The Connie. He said he didn’t think he’d bother. I pressed him, said I thought you’d be over the moon to see him. You should have seen how his face lit up…” She began to cry again. “Why, oh why, did I say that? I could just as easily have said to call back another time.”

“You were right though,” I tried to sound reassuring, “I was over the moon. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him.” It hit me between the eyes then that I would never see Ben again, and I blacked out. Seconds later, I opened my eyes. Mum was still holding my hand and regarding me anxiously. “I’m okay,” I lied.

We kept an unbearable silence for ages, Mum with tears streaming down her face and sniffing into one tissue after another, the handkerchief no longer fit for purpose, while I attempted in vain to shrug off a horrible detachment from everything. It struck me that I hadn’t even cried for Billy. What is wrong with me? People are dead, one a dear friend. So why can’t I even cry for them?  Yes, I told myself repeatedly, Ben was a dear friend, even if we had somehow drifted apart.

I watched my mother crying softly and envied her capacity for tears.

Dimly, I was aware of my father’s fingers in my hair as real as my mother’s hand in mine. It was as if the kernel, the very hub of me, was being dangled in front of my eyes, like bread on a string hung out for birds, only to be jerked out of reach whenever my senses rid themselves of a stubborn inertia just long enough to let me make a grab for it. I grasped, perhaps for the first time, that I needed to confront whatever or whoever was jerking the damn string.

“It will get better, dear. Don’t ask me how or when, but I promise you it will get better,” Mum assured me, smiling weakly through her tears. If for no other reason than she was my mother, I believed her. Moreover, from that moment, I experienced a new if tenuous, confidence in myself. It was nothing as dramatic as off with the old and on with the new, but I was dimly aware of a subtle difference. How ironic, I wryly confided to my alter ego, that this burst of quiet optimism should be coming at me out of nowhere while I felt so sick at heart and anything but confident.

“I’ll be okay, Mum.” I looked right at her as I said it and could tell from her relieved expression that it was all she wanted to hear. While any conviction it might be true may have been tenuous on my part, it was enough to see me through an interview an hour later with an irritatingly pedantic police constable. It also helped keep my blood pressure down when my temperature shot up and the hospital refused point blank to discharge me.

My mother came every day, sometimes with Peter Short. My brother Paul came just the once. He was on his own and brought some grapes. But the tension between us was embarrassing and he did not stay long. I had several other visitors, in addition to the dour constable, who took innumerable notes and grew impatient with my hazy recollections of the fire, but was at least able to reassure me the Crolleys would be brought to book for it.

Bo and Gabby brought a huge bunch of flowers.

Clive dropped by and told me not to worry, he would see to everything. He was keen to put forward a view that The Connie’s fortunes were far from irretrievable and seemed confident we would be back in business within six to eight weeks. While his enthusiasm was commendable and helped lift my spirits, I couldn’t help thinking it was a totally unrealistic timetable. Even so, if it was little more than a brave attempt to cheer me up on Clive’s part, it certainly gave my morale a welcome boost to take his predictions at face value.

Bo, making a second visit on his own, appeared to share Clive’s optimism. At the same time, he pooh-poohed any suggestion that the man might be concerned with sparing my feelings. “Clive is never, but never sentimental about business. You know that as well as I, dear heart. If Clive says a veritable phoenix will rise from the ashes, you can be sure a veritable phoenix we shall see.”

“In six to eight weeks?” I was sceptical.

Bo shrugged. “Who knows what plenty of overtime and a healthy bonus incentive might achieve? But enough of Clive’s wish list. It’s good to see you looking so much better.” His beaming face was more effective than any tonic.

“It’s so good to see you,” I said, laughing for the first time in ages.

“You too, dear heart, and I have to say you’re looking halfway human again too. Gabby and I left before the fire. When we heard the news, well, there were some bad moments when we feared the worst I can tell you.” He frowned but the sober expression lifted soon enough. “Yet, here you are, as safe as houses and raring to go!”

“Then you need glasses,” I sighed wearily.

“Surely you want to get out of this place? Hospitals give me the creeps, I’ll say they do!” He gave an exaggerated shudder.

I had to smile, but couldn’t keep up the pretence for long. “Then what…?” I put to him, “Another inquest, more aggro from the press and more…” My voice trailed off miserably.

“More funerals, yes, I fear so,” Bo murmured.

I was grateful to him. No one had cared to mention the deaths. Everyone, even my mother after that first time, had contrived to avoid the subject. “I don’t think I can go through it all again,” I said, “First Dad, then Billy Mack…”

I had only ever mentioned Billy to Bo in passing and was briefly tempted to tell him the truth until it struck me like a sledgehammer that this was neither the right time nor place. Instead, I went on, “Ben Hallas and I were very close, you know. That is, we were once. We sort of drifted apart. My fault, that, not his…” I found myself confiding.

Bo said nothing. 

I talked for a long time. Bo made no attempt to prompt me whenever I fell silent, suggest answers to the many rhetorical questions I’d put to myself or pass any comment.  I might have been talking to myself. Only, I could not have handled it on my own. Grief, guilt, pain…I held all these things and more up to the light of Bo Devine’s consummate silence.

Now and then, I’d pause for breath. Bo would smile encouragingly, and I’d struggle on, fumbling for words that, if not quite making sense of what had happened, at least put me in touch with my feelings in a way I hadn’t been able to do for a long, long, time.

An expurgation process had begun.

Bo sat chewing on an unlit cigar, uttering no word of recrimination, judgement or sympathy. It was as if he understood that I needed to work these things through for myself. So it was I continued to explore my conscience and deal as best I could with whatever I found there. No one could help me square things with Ben any more than with Billy. But Bo, bless him, lent me the full weight of his friendship that afternoon in support of my clumsy efforts to make sense of the world according to Robert E. Young.

A watery twilight had filled the space above my head and begun to dip a darker hue before I let myself drift, drained, yet at the same time curiously refreshed, into a kaleidoscopic reverie of things, events, people, that represented all the good things in my life from which (and whom) I felt able to take…Yes, comfort. At the same time,  even as I took what I could, I remained painfully aware of an acute lack of giving on my part. Inevitably, the kaleidoscope stopped turning and pieces of a pattern fell into place.

“Matthew!” I sat up with a jolt, wide-awake.

An elderly man in the next bed leaned across to tell me that Bo had slipped away hours ago. I glanced up and twisted my neck, the better to see through the window above my bed. As I settled down to sleep, I carried with me the image of a solitary star, lighting up a tiny patch of midnight among windswept clouds intent on snuffing it out. My last conscious thought was that the clouds might do their worst, but the star would be back. The old adage crossed my mind about losing battles and winning wars…

The next day my temperature was normal, and it was with eager anticipation of being allowed home that I awaited the po-faced Mister Shaw on his rounds. Shortly before he was due, Maggie flung open the double doors at the end of the ward and sauntered up to my bed. “Hi,” was all she said before plonking herself in the chair beside my well propped-up pillows.

“How’s Shaun?” I asked immediately, as I always did of anyone I thought likely to have some idea.

Maggie gave a characteristic shrug. “You know…Holding his own.”

“If I knew I wouldn’t be asking,” I said testily.

Maggie refused to be riled. “He’ll be okay, you’ll see. And look at you. Aren’t you the lucky one? I mean…” If she could have chosen a kinder turn of phrase, at least she had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Yes, lucky,” I agreed.

“Lou sends her love.”

“How is she?”

“Oh, she’s fine, apart from being exhausted.”  Maggie ran both hands through her hair in that old familiar gesture I remembered so well. “She’d have come with me, but I told her to rest. Not that you get any rest with a new baby,” she added with a wry grimace, “but her mum’s been helping out a lot while Shaun…”

“Baby, you say?” I had to interrupt, “But it wasn’t expected until…”

“A few weeks yet, that’s true. But, well, what with the shock of…everything. She went into labour on the night of the fire.” I felt as though an awkward pause was building a wall between us, but Maggie was having none of that, tossed her head and said gaily, “Babies, eh? It’s not as if the little tykes even wait until they’re born before they start calling the shots! She’s got Lou and just about everyone else wrapped around her little finger, this one, believe you me.”

“She…? It’s a girl then.”

“She’s usually are,” Maggie giggled.

“What’s her name?”

“Lou’s waiting until Shaun is well enough to help her choose one. They were so convinced it was going to be a boy, you see. If it had been me, I’d have wanted to know. But Lou didn’t for reasons best known to her. As for Shaun, he was so sure it was going to be a boy. I think Lou’s a bit worried he might be disappointed….” She chattered on. Now and again, I had the feeling she was holding something back then remonstrated with myself for being over sensitive.

“Shaun won’t care what it is, boy or girl. He’ll just be so happy to be a dad,” I commented.

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Maggie agreed, “and so should you be, seeing as how you’re a godfather.”

“Too right, I am.” I hadn’t forgotten. A warm glow settled on my stomach and took most of a persistent chill away.

“How’s Ed?” She had my complete attention so I missed neither a telltale reddening of the cheeks nor a change of tone reflecting a subtle edginess in her manner.

“Ed’s just glad to be alive, like the rest of us,” she replied, unconvincingly. But if something was wrong, it was hardly my business to pry. 

Glad to be alive. Yes, I, too, was glad to be alive, and how!  Moreover, for the first time in days, I began to feel alive. Suddenly, I was not only anxious to leave the hospital and get on with my life but also found myself considering the prospect with growing excitement.

“Mind you…” Maggie was saying, “He’s none too happy about the local rag rating him hero of the hour,” she giggled again, “so he’s playing hard to get, the idiot. That’s why he’s not been to see you, by the way. He’s terrified you’ll try and thank him for saving your life. Oh, Ed can make out he’s a hard case as much as he likes. But take it from me, under all that macho there’s a real sweetie. One of these days, he’ll make some lucky woman very happy…”

But not you, I acknowledged wordlessly without having to be told. Even so, I could not resist asking, “Do you love him?”

“So what’s love when it’s at home?” she countered, “Cleaner, nurse maid and production line all rolled into one if a girl’s not careful. Oh, and for what? All Ed Mack’s worldly goods...? I don’t think so somehow.”  How could someone so young, vivacious and beautiful be so cynical, I wondered?  I was thinking, too, and not for the first time, how much she reminded me of Gabby Devine when Maggie added softly, “Yes, I love him.”

“So why are you wearing Clive’s ring?”

“Why do you think? I’m going to marry the man, for heaven’s sake.”

“But if you’re in love with Ed, and I imagine he’s in love with you…”

“Of course he’s in love with me. But that’s our business. It’s certainly none of yours or anyone else’s for that matter. And don’t look so damn disapproving either. You may be my boss but you’re not my keeper or Ed’s.” She ran both hands through her flaming hair and gave me a glare that told me I looked picture of self-righteous indignation.  Hastily, I attempted to modify my expression. She was right, after all. It was none of my damn business.

Maggie laughed. I felt the colour rush to my cheeks. “Look,” she went on, “Ed could have died, you and he both. And where would that have left me, eh? I’ll tell you. Broken hearted and stony broke, that’s where. Now, if I marry Clive, Ed will see to it that the heart stays in good nick and should Clive should ever snuff it, bless him, I’m well taken care of. He gets to die happy while Ed and me…”

“Live happy ever after, I suppose?”

“That’s the idea.”

“It’s horrible, so…cold-blooded,” I stammered.

“And marriage isn’t?” she flared. “As an institution it stinks. All the more reason to bleed it dry, if you ask me.”

 “It’s sick!” I retorted, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. A thought struck me. “Besides,” I challenged her with some conviction, “Ed will never see things your way.”

The grey-green eyes flashed wickedly. “Oh? I wouldn’t bet on that if I were you. He’ll love it once he get used to the idea. Playing the ‘other man’ will tickle his ego no end. And we both know how big an ego Ed has…” She gave a feisty chuckle in the way some women have of being intensely maddening and incredibly sexy at the same time. Again, I was reminded of Gabby Devine. “Even if Ed does decide to be bloody minded, it won’t last. Trust me. As soon as Clive and I have a joint bank account, Ed will see things differently.”

“Why, you calculating little…”

“Yes, I’m a bitch.” She laughed aloud. “You can say it to my face, you know. I couldn’t give a damn. It’s only what people say behind my back that bothers me. I like to be sure they get their facts right, you see. It’s only fair, after all. Don’t you agree? I mean, look at what people say about you behind your back….” She laughed again.  “No one likes to be misrepresented do they?”

Was she winding me up? If so, she was succeeding. Moreover, she was doing a damn good job of pulling me all ways at once. “Clive is nobody’s fool,” I said flatly. Even so, I couldn’t be sure whether I intended the inflexion of my voice to convey a warning, threat, or grudging admiration.

Maggie sighed and I caught a glimpse of the teenager who used to hang out with Billy Mack’s crowd. “I am fond of Clive, you know. All he really wants is for us to play Mums and Dads so why not if it will make him happy?”

“You’re pregnant?” I gulped.

“Don’t look so shocked. It does happen, you know. Be flattered you’re the first to know.”

“Whose?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“What does it matter whose?”  She pouted angrily, piled up her hair and let it drop, partially covering her face, “Who cares, so long as it’s healthy and guaranteed to carry on the Rider dynasty?”

“There are no guarantees in this life,” I remarked abjectly.

“Honestly, Rob, you can be so bloody pompous sometimes!”  She roared with laughter, tears in her eyes, “Why do you always have to be so damn right all the time too?”

“Chance would be a fine thing!” I said with feeling and then found myself, a trifle bewildered, in fits of laughter as well. My flesh may not have been quite up to it, but my spirit most certainly was.  In spite of everything and whatever my feelings about Maggie’s revelations, it was good to know I could still laugh.

“Call me a bitch as much as you like, but, I promise you this. My kid is going to have the best of everything. So is Mum…or you’re no pain in the proverbial yourself, Rob Young.” She leaned forward ad kissed me on the lips. “Sorry,” she giggled, “I don’t suppose you like girls kissing you?”

“I can bear it in small doses,” I conceded dryly and we both burst out laughing again. As the sound died, we regarded one another warily, not quite ready yet to admit we each liked what we saw. At this point, a junior nurse came and begged us to keep the noise down. Apparently, Doctor Shaw had begun his rounds and the ward Sister was in a foul mood.

In less than two hours I had been discharged and was knocking back cranberry juice at my mother’s kitchen table, happy to be ‘home’ and sad because I wasn’t ‘home’ at all. I sighed. Where was ‘home’? I sighed again and answered myself with another question. Where, oh where, was Matthew? He must have heard about the fire so why didn’t he come to see me in hospital? Do I matter so little to him? Had I hurt him too much?

Glad to be distracted, I turned my mind to more practical matters. Earlier, Mum and Peter had broken the news that they were planning a June wedding, less than six weeks away. Leaving me alone to digest this sobering thought, they had departed for the supermarket almost immediately. I considered my options. They had made it clear I was welcome to make my home with them, but…How could I? It didn’t feel right. I don’t belong here any more. But dare I return to the flat? What if Matthew threw me out? It was not an unlikely scenario, after all.

Whatever, I had to find a place to live. As for belonging anywhere, that was something else.

Dog Roses - Chapter Twenty-Two

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I had seen movies and read newspaper accounts of fires on public premises but nothing could have prepared me for the horror of being caught up in one.  It struck me that the smoke was getting thicker, flames spreading more rapidly. At the same time, in spite of the terrified yells and screams of shadowy figures dashing in all directions, it was as if time stood still.

     Everything that happened next seemed to take place in ghastly slow motion.

     As I ran into the main dining area, the lights flickered into life. It was a great comfort. Although still difficult to see through dense, swirling patches of smoke, that generator undoubtedly saved many lives.

     Gradually, a sense of ordered chaos prevailed over blind hysteria. There was still panic, but the lights coming on had a tangibly calming effect. Even so, the smell of fear was, if anything, stronger than the stench of burning furniture and fabrics. 

     Smoke was everywhere and into everything. I could hear people choking on it that I could not even see. Now and again it would clear fractionally, revealing nightmare scenes that would haunt me all my life. I could just make out Bax Pearce grappling with a fire extinguisher, saw him almost topple backwards as a blast of foam drenched a young couple whose hair and clothes were alight. 

     I spotted Ed. He was trying to clear a path to one of the exits with another extinguisher. 

     Everywhere, people were pushing, shoving, screaming. The stage was ablaze. I saw frantic shadows running from and across it, gesticulating wildly, mouths opening and shutting like cartoon characters.  It was farcical, grotesque, and desperately unfunny.

     At last, I managed to grab a fire extinguisher.

     A blazing figure collided with me and sent us both sprawling. For an instant, I let the foamy substance soak me then regained control and turned it on the burning shape beside me. It had gone quite still. Man or woman, I could not tell, partly for the smoke and partly for the extent of his or her burns. My head was spinning. I caught a glimpse of something pink. A top perhaps or razed flesh, I could not be sure.  

    Instinctively, I knew I was wasting precious time. The person was dead. Yet, I let precious seconds tick away before I could bring myself to move on, galvanized into action by the shrill, persistent shrieking of emergency sirens. Help was on its way.

     I tried to get my bearings and thought I was close to one of the Fire Exits nearest the L-shaped bar. My lungs were filled to bursting and I could scarcely draw breath. I tripped over an ice bucket. A sheet of flame flared where I stumbled, singeing my hair. I heard a swish of water, tore the shirt from my back, and then plunged it into the near empty bucket.

     As I tied the wet shirt around my nose and mouth I heard someone coughing and spluttering nearby. I headed towards the sound, fearfully aware that I should be going in the opposite direction, and tripped headlong over a crouching body.

      “Ben!” It was my old friend Ben Hallas, whom I had been intending to call for months but had never got around to it.

     “Hi Rob!” he spluttered and managed a grin. “I thought I’d come and see how you were making out.”

     “Not so good!” I exclaimed grimly while helping him to his feet. “Get your top off and wrap it round your face. Good. Now, lean on me. We need to go this way…” We stumbled through the ever-thickening smoke.

Then the lights went out again. The darkness was terrifying. I became completely disoriented. My stomach was churning over.

     I was lost.

     “Can you believe I’m lost in my own damn club?” I shouted crossly into the cloth around my mouth, but neither the weird sounds I made nor my feeble attempt at humour did much if anything to help restore what precious little self-confidence I still possessed.

     “Rob!” I recognized Ed’s voice, albeit muffled, and followed the sound. Ben was heavy and kept dragging his feet. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep a grip on him. My relief knew no bounds as Ed’s familiar bulk loomed immediately ahead.

     “You’re going the wrong way!” Ed yelled, grabbed my arm and proceeded to steer me in another direction.

     I actually saw an EXIT sign before part of the ceiling collapsed. A mad surge of unbearable heat almost swept us off our feet, a shower of white-hot sparks scorching our clothes and flesh.

     Our path was completely blocked.

     Seized by terror and panic, I let my hold on Ben slip and sensed rather than heard him stagger several steps.

     Ed had a violent coughing fit, swayed and would have lost his balance had I not steadied him with my free hand, the other clutching at the bar rail. My fingers touched glass, recognizing the feel of a soda siphon split seconds before my throbbing head acknowledged the fact.

     Simultaneously, I sensed Ben was no longer at my side. Frantically I looked around. There was no sign. I tore the shirt from my mouth and tried to yell but a mouthful of smoke sent me into a paroxysm of coughing. I hastily replaced the shirt and turned my attention to Ed. 

     After propping Ed against the bar, I hastily sprayed my face then the rest of my body then did the same for him. Wrenching the siphon cap free, I lifted it to my lips and took a brief but welcome swig before holding it to Ed’s mouth so he, too, could ease a parched mouth and throat. As soon as I had his attention again, I indicated my shirt. He understood at once. Even so, I counted anguished seconds while he tugged at the tie at his neck, tore the smart dress shirt free and drenched it with the remaining soda before securing its sleeves behind his head.

     Suddenly, I felt exhausted. The awful screaming had stopped. Only the sound of bottles exploding rose above the fierce crackle of the flames.

     Which way to go? It was the Devil’s own choice. A tug on my wrist nearly caused me to lose my balance. Ed led the way as, trusting to instinct alone to guide us, we hared through a corridor of fire barely wide enough to accommodate a circus Thin Man, let alone the pair of us. I thought I heard raised voices. But these were not calls for help.  I listened again. This time only the menacing roar of flames attacked  my ears.

Ed paused, and I sensed he was listening too.

     We should turn left, I was certain of it. But Ed was already dragging me to the right. My mind resisted, panic-stricken. My feet, though, had other ideas. Choice abandoned me.  I was aware of an almighty crash followed by waves of pain and a mad rush of intolerable heat in my face. Then I was falling, falling, falling…into a yawning Black Hole.

     It’s all over, I thought. In my mind’s eye, I saw my body in its coffin being carried on a conveyor belt to the incinerator. Absurdly, the body began protesting. I don’t want to be cremated, damn it! I want to be buried! I want a stone where people can come and remember me…

     All at once, everything became a blur, like a patch of fog letting rip horrible, terrifying echoes.

     I am a small boy making a belly flop landing in my dad’s lap. He lifts me high above his head. We are both laughing. Gently, he lowers me and holds me close, my face pressed tightly against his shirt. T’s a blue shirt, a brilliant sky blue. I am finding it hard to breathe and hammer on his chest with tiny fists. He flings me in the air. Up, up and away! Falling now but he catches me. We are in fits of laughter. He hugs me again.  I can’t breathe. He gives me some space. I start to relax. Over his shoulder, I can see my mother.  Her face is full of concern. I sense that she is looking for me. I call out to her that everything is ok. I am safe, with my dad. She makes no sign that she has heard but continues searching, with an urgency so intense it is suffocating. “Mum, I’m here. We’re here!” I try to shout but the words stick in my throat. “Dad, let me go, let me go!” I scream and try to wriggle free. But he won’t let go of me.

     A new awareness hits me. I hear my dad’s voice, caressing my frayed nerves like a summer breeze smelling of rain and roses.

     My body is wracked with pain.

     Despite the pain, I find myself struggling with a curious familiarity and striving to identify its source. The pain gets worse, much worse. All I want now is for it to stop. I feel my dad’s cheek, wet against mine, his fingers running through my hair. I start to relax again. But I am tired, so very tired. I want to sleep. But sleep won’t come. I look for my mother, afraid for her, sensing something of her fear for my safety. How to let her know that I am with my dad, snug and…safe?  Yes and no. I feel less snug now, less safe. I cannot bear the cloying grip. Again, I try to break free.

     Over the shoulder that supports my child chin, I spot a new face. Someone I dimly recognize but cannot place moves almost into focus then out of sight. Again, it appears on the very edge of my vision but only to float of sight once more. And so it continues to tease me, this shadowy shapelessness of a child’s unconscious thought. Suddenly, it darts forward, looms larger than life, features plainly identifiable.

     It is Matthew.

     My dad relaxes his grip and swings me high above his head again. Our eyes lock. Gently, he lowers me down, our faces now so close that the heat of his rapid breath fills my lungs to bursting. His expression is saintly, his face glowing with love and reassurance. My child eyes sting with tears but shed none.

     I hear sounds that might be voices but none make any sense. I look around to find myself in a sea of bobbing heads that seem only loosely attached to their bodies, so much so that I half expect them to pull loose at any time and float into the air like balloons.

     I quickly spot Bo, Gabby, too. Both wave. I want to wave back but my limbs feel like lead. Ed is there and Shaun. Maggie and Lou are mouthing words at me I cannot for the life of me make out.

I see Paul. My brother looks away, starts to elbow a path in the opposite direction then appears to change his mind but the crowd refuses to give his twisting, writhing torso sufficient space to make a full about-turn.  My dry lips shape Paul’s name. My father too, turns to look. Together, we are willing Paul to succeed.

     Suddenly, all the faces blur into one and Billy Mack’s boyish grin is tugging at my every nerve, filling my senses to overflowing.

     I feel a letting go of hands and a sense of release washes over me. Yet when I look for my dad, it is Billy’s face confronting me with a rapt expression.  Nor does it, I realize, include me. The blue eyes do not even see me. The full lips have not spread into that sweet grin for my sake.  Billy, I feel infinitely close to understanding, has a vision of his own. Moreover, I am glad. Our love belongs no more to his vision than to mine. It has passed through us, left us behind.

     I hear my name called over and over. The voice could belong to anyone and everyone. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the sound of it. Someone cares. People care. The least I can do is respond…

     Starting at the erratic sound of my own breathing, I opened my eyes. My smarting nostrils took in that unmistakeable hospital smell and the taste on my tongue was one of sheer relief. I’m alive. I must have repeated those words to myself at least a dozen times before I became convinced it was true.

     I was tucked up in a bed screened by curtains in what various smells and noises told me was a hospital ward, so dimly lit that I had to assume it was night time. A stab of pain in my right arm led to the startling discovery that the whole limb dangled from a pulley affair mounted beside the bed. In spite of a splitting headache I gave my fumbling senses leave to investigate why I should be in hospital in the first place, let alone with an arm in traction.

     Then I remembered.

     My memory was very patchy. In my mind’s eye, I saw smoke and flames in all directions. The Connie was on fire. I saw Maggie Dillon rallying frantic punters to her side at the bottom of some stairs. A cameo of Ed Mack and me stumbling through a thick pall of smoke came into poor focus. Suddenly, starkly, the image of a blackened body, still burning, and a flash of something pink occupied my entire vision.  I heard a terrible screaming that would not stop.

     Later, they told me I was the one who screamed.

     I became vaguely aware of voices, icy fingers grasping my free arm, a pricking at my flesh. Then, thankfully, I plunged into oblivion, undisturbed by dreams good or bad.

     I awoke to daylight streaming across my near naked body from a window just above my head. There seemed to be a lot of noise. At the same time, a curious hush enfolded me in a light, airy embrace.  Comings and goings reached me from a distance at first but quickly homed in on me.  The curtains were pulled open and my mother came and sank into a chair beside my bed.  She looked terrible, as if she hadn’t slept a wink all night. She was plainly unaware that I was awake although I did not leave her in ignorance for long. Stung into action by an attack of appalled self-consciousness, I shook off my dozy state and covered myself with a sheet.

     My mother cried and fussed in turn. I hardly minded at all. On the contrary, I was only too happy to let her plump my pillows and dab some of the eau de cologne she always carried on my forehead. “You had an incredibly lucky escape,” she fretted, “The ward sister says you can come home soon. Apart from some second-degree burns, a nasty cut on the back of your head and a broken arm, there’s not a lot wrong with you. You’ll have to be treated as an outpatient for a while of course but…” She started crying softly. “Oh, Robert, it could have been so much worse. I nearly lost you.”

     Something about the way my mother contrived to avoid looking directly at me made my blood run cold. This, in spite of the ward’s cloying heat. “How bad was it, Mum?” I finally managed to say.

     She hesitated before ducking the question altogether. “You’ll be fine dear. There are no complications with the arm. It’s a clean break.  You fell awkwardly when a beam came crashing down on you. Ed Mack pulled you clear…” She rambled on for a bit and then fell ominously silent.

     I waited until she had settled in the chair. Hands clenched in her lap, she directed a tearful gaze at a particularly nasty blister on the side of my neck rather than look me in the eye.

    “How many…died?” I swallowed hard. “It was arson, you know,” I blurted before she had time to answer, “Those damn Crolleys…”

     “So people are saying,” agreed my mother unhappily.

     I took several deep breaths. “How’s Ed? He saved my life, you said?”

     “Apparently, although that’s not how he sees it.” She raised a wry smile, “He’s fine, just a few cuts and bruises and minor burns that’s all. You were both very, very lucky. He’s still in shock, according to the Dillon girl, but that’s only to be expected. It seems they wanted to keep him in for observation but he was having none of it. His poor mother got into such a state that he discharged himself and took her home. That poor woman, what she must have gone through, and so soon after losing young Billy too!” My mother looked away and lapsed into a reflective silence.

     “You’ve seen Maggie?”  I expressed surprise.

     My mother nodded. “She and Louise Devlin have been here all night. A good many of us have,” she added.

     “Lou is okay?” I thought of the baby and my stomach gave a sickening lurch. My mother nodded and patted my hand reassuringly. “And Shaun, mum, is Shaun okay?” Her expression grew instantly more serious. “He’s in Intensive Care.” Her hold on my hand tightened, “but you mustn’t worry. The doctors say he has every chance of making a complete recovery. Apparently, he became trapped when a pillar fell on him while he was trying to rescue people.  Fire fighters had to cut him free.”

     “They took their time!” I muttered angrily.

     “They were on the scene in minutes, dear. I dare say it must have seemed longer.  But for them, you and Ed Mack would never have got out of that inferno alive.” Her voice shook with emotion as she fumbled in a bag for a handkerchief. I lay back on my pillows, pensively, while she sobbed.

     “How many people died?” I forced myself to ask the question again that was ticking away like a time bomb where my heart should have been.

     “It could have been so much worse,” my mother chose, nervously, to prevaricate a second time.

     “How many, mum?” I insisted.

     “I only know they brought out three bodies,” she began sobbing into the handkerchief again.

     “Whose?” I demanded flatly.

     “The police say it’s a miracle more people weren’t badly hurt or killed.”

     “Whose?” I repeated.

     She gave a long sigh then, “Shelia Pearce’s boy, Barry, was one of them. His girlfriend, Linda somebody I think they said, was another.”

      “Liz,” I murmured dully, “her name was Liz Daniels.”

     “Yes, Liz, that was it.”

     In my mind’s eye, I saw Baz Pearce in the doorway of the penthouse flat. “He came to warn us,” I told my mother, “and now…” Now poor Baz was dead, Liz too. I tried to digest this news and found it almost impossible. Yes, they had been a couple of oddballs, but so full of life. If Baz hadn’t come to warn us…and now he was dead. As for Liz, she of the weird hairdos, soppy smile and big breasts…Why her, poor cow?

     My mother began to fidget.

     “Three. You said they brought out three bodies…” But my voice gave way to a plaintive croak as my lips formed the question, “Who else?” My whole body went rigid. Whatever further tragedy my mother was about to throw at me, I would take it on the chin.

    “Ben Hallas,” she whispered, “It was poor Ben, dear.”

     I had to look away. As I did so, I snatched my hand from hers and made a tight fist, deliberately digging my fingernails into my palm. As a pathetic attempt to fight pain with pain, it failed miserably. I noticed, inconsequentially, that my knuckles had turned white. “That’s impossible!” I decided it must all be some ghastly mistake. “I saw Ben, spoke to him. He was as close to me as you are now.” Already, though, I was being tormented by a memory, vague at first but clearing fast, homing in on me like an express train. Now I'm holding on to Ben and now, in the thick of all that sickening horror and confusion...I'm letting go. How could I have done that? But my throbbing head was providing no answers, only more questions, each one banging away like a frantic drumbeat, one especially.

     Why?