The Rachel Incident(42)

One thoughtful rejection letter was good. Two was even better. Two was “buzz.”

“If I’m going to become known for my rounded gay characters,” he said, “I better have a rounded gay life.”

We took the bus out and walked a mile from the village. I asked him why we couldn’t just ask his mum or stepfather to collect us, and he said he needed the walk to figure out what he was going to say.

I thought that he wanted to try out his different coming-out lines on me. He didn’t. We were silent the whole time, James walking a little ahead.

There were plenty of distractions, when we finally arrived. Nicola had a Burmese cat that had just given birth to kittens, and we cuddled them over a box in the garage while she talked us through the breeding process. She was a sweet woman, all blonde hair and gold jewellery, and constantly surprised at having ended up on a farm in Ireland. James’s stepfather was always off doing something, somewhere. I never knew enough about farming to understand what.

She touched her son a lot. Her hand on the nape of his skinny neck, her thumb rubbing along his hairline. I held the kittens, one in each hand, their claws hooking my dress.

“We’re hoping to get four hundred for the boys,” Nicola said. “Five for the girls.”

“Mum, I’m gay.”

Nicola looked at her son, then at me. I had presumed the gay conversation would happen while I was in the bathroom. I turned my attention to the cats.

“Okay,” she said, at last. Then she reached her hand higher under James’s hairline, and drew her son close to her. She hugged him for a long minute. Then she started to cry.

I’ve had enough queer friends in the years since to know this: the mothers always cry. No matter how much they knew already. No matter how obvious it was. It is the kind of crying you do while watching a movie on an airplane. Intense and unreal, high on silent terror and recycled air.

Nicola kept crying, and I put the kittens down and slowly moved out of the garage.

There was nowhere to go, so I sat on a wall and looked at an empty field. Someone, possibly James’s stepfather, was riding a lawnmower.

It was some time before James and his mother came out of the garage. “It’s nothing to do with that,” I heard him say to her. “It was always there.”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to make them self-conscious with my presence.

“Rachel!” Nicola called, her throat sounding dry. “Will you come in for a sandwich?”

We ate ham sandwiches at her kitchen table, and then she drove us to the bus. We moved through the motions like people after a funeral, with a sense that, even in the worst situations, people still need to be fed and get places. I knew that there was something else going on here, and that the mysterious solve for x that surrounded James and his sexuality was being revealed to me. I was being given evidence, but of what, I didn’t know.

We didn’t speak much on the bus, or at all until we were safely back at the house in Shandon Street. We got into his bed without saying a word.

“Has nothing to do with what?” I asked.

He sighed. “I was abused.”

It reads strangely, but that was how he said it. He didn’t want to give me lots of editorial detail, lots of camera angles, and then let me come to my own conclusion. He had a lot of charisma, but he didn’t want to use it for this.

I got those camera angles, eventually. In dribs and drabs, and over the years. The sister’s friend from college. The guest room with the small TV, where James went to watch cartoons, and where the friend was staying. The soft, funny discussions that turned into harsh reality and finally a dull, oily feeling of distance.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He looked at me for the first time since we left earlier that morning. “It was after we moved to Ireland. It only happened once. I told them straight away.”

He said it all like he was reading from a telegram.

“She spent so long trying to keep us safe from my dad. I think it broke her that she had forgotten to keep us safe from other people.”

“Oh, James.” I had nothing else. Just, Oh, James.

“You know, bad things used to happen so often, back in England, to people we knew, to people in our family. I always just thought: Something is coming for me eventually. So when it happened, I almost thought, Oh, here it is.”

I laid my head on his shoulder.

“But she…she was sure it would screw me up. It ruined her. I didn’t want her to be right.”

“You’re not screwed up.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound like he believed it. “I don’t know, I was giving off gay kid vibes before I could stand. Which doesn’t help. I think men notice that kind of thing.” He paused. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for taking me,” I replied. “And for telling me that.”

He put his arm around me, and I moved my head to his chest. We lay like that for a while. James and I slept in the same bed a lot, but we never cuddled except for that night. We fell asleep like lovers.

I woke up a few hours later, bra still on, my ribcage straining at the band. His eyes opened, and we looked at one another, conscious that we had woken up in a new world. He stroked my face, whispered my name, and softly kissed me on the mouth.

The kiss lasted ten seconds. Fifteen, tops. I don’t remember how it stopped, or why, but we went back to sleep, untroubled as babies.