I took him through to the conservatory, where I’d unpacked the engine and some of the rolling stock, and sat down on a wicker chair to watch him. I had a chance then to study him a little more closely than I had before. His face was squarish, his chin blunt. His eyes were large and grey, and his brows and lashes were slightly darker than his hair. His mouth was straight, turning neither up nor down, a decision that life would make for him, as it did for us all, but his face was naturally serious. Later I was often to tease him that he gave the impression of someone who is always thinking serious thoughts. Deceptive. Strong currents beneath a millpond.
He spent a little time examining the train, then straightened up and brushed his hands on his jeans as if he knew that he dared not get dirt on the furniture. Possibly the dustsheets spread over the floor and the glass table had given him a clue.
“It’s in very good condition,” he said, and I could see he was suddenly shy again—or careful, at the very least. “It was good of you to let me see it.”
I wondered why the sudden formality. It was as if the sun had gone in, although the light was almost unbearable in the conservatory.
“But will it work on your layout?”
He pushed his fringe back and looked up at me. “You shouldn’t,” he said. “It’s too valuable.” He launched into a litany of specifications and manual-memorised facts and figures. All I could gather was that there had been few made and there were fewer still with their original boxes. “You should sell it. Or keep it.”
“I thought you didn’t approve of things being kept and not used.”
He grinned then, caught out in his own paradox. “Well. Yeah. But it’s not my train.”
Suddenly I understood. He was embarrassed at my offer. “I don’t go back on a promise.”
“You didn’t promise anything.”
“Not out loud.”
“Oh. That kind of promise.”
The air around us seemed to shrink, and my chest felt tight. The sun went behind a cloud. One small tiny cotton wool ball blocking out a billion tons of heat and light.
“I meant what I said. If it’s compatible, then you can have it.”
“My Da…father would never let me.”
“I’m not giving it to him. In fact—I’m not giving it to you. You can use it and when you’re fed up or your wife makes you pack it all up into boxes, then you can give it back.”
Alec seemed to give up, and he smiled. The cloud, beaten at last by larger odds, gave up in tandem, vanished into the blue-white sky and the sun streamed back into the conservatory. The light hit Alec’s hair and I think that’s when I saw him the way I would have seen him if life were a book, the way I should have seen him the first time.
The tightness in my chest increased and I had to stand up and move into the house. “It’s too hot in here,” I said hurriedly. “Come through to the kitchen.” I was shocked; my legs were shaking. I felt weak, like I’d been drained of blood, and my heart thudded erratically in my chest.
I’d looked at him and found him beautiful.
Up to then he’d been the young man next door, nothing more, no matter that that sounds like the worst kind of self-deception.
I was not. Am. Not. The sort of man who looks at teenagers in that way. I’d never even looked at a man in that way. Despite what Phil and I indulged in, I’d never appraised my workmates. I’d not even considered the aesthetics of Phil, although I knew that he was tanned and blond, and I knew he wasn’t ugly. But I’d never considered his attractiveness. I didn’t do what I did with him because he was handsome, but because we were friends. I never found myself staring at him and thinking of his looks in that way. He was…just Phil.
As I pulled open kitchen cabinets with one hand while with the other I dug my nails into my palm hard enough to draw blood, I reminded myself that men were not supposed to be beautiful. It wasn’t a term that one applied. But, as I turned with an empty glass in my hand and told Alec to help himself to more lemonade, I felt preconceptions that I’d clung to slip away. I knew I was wrong. If Alec hadn’t taken the glass at that moment, I probably would have crushed it.
He was beautiful.
Chapter 7
The rest of Alec’s visit was a nightmare, and one I would look back on and get cold flushes about for months after. Even in the cool of the kitchen I was too hot, my clothes felt tight and I slid back to not being able to communicate with him. I knew that I had gone scarlet when I’d seen him in that new way, and I knew that he’d seen, because he’d been looking right at me when it happened. He’d looked away, and his brow contracted like he knew what I was thinking. I remember sitting down again and hoping that he didn’t know, that he’d take a grown man blushing to be shyness or something—even if I couldn’t think for one moment what else it could be.
I lapsed into a silence that suffocated and strangled the words even as they formed in my mind. Everything I thought of was trite or seemed heavy with double meaning.
At last, he pushed his chair back. “Well, I’d better go.”
“I’ll help you with the engine.”
“No need. I can manage.” He lifted the cardboard box easily and I had to look away because I found I was watching at the shift of the muscles in his bare arms.
All I could do was follow him out of the French door and open the gate
