Believing the Lie

“First time you’ve smiled since you walked in the door. Tough day?”

“Not really,” Kav said. “Just a lot of work and not enough help. You?”

“No.” They both drank then, eyes on each other. Kav smiled again. Ian moved toward him. Kav moved away. He tried to make it look as if his attention had been caught by the gleam of cutlery or the low bowl of flowers on the table, but Ian wasn’t deceived. What he thought in reaction was what any man would think when he’s twelve years older than his lover and he’s given up everything to be with him.

At twenty-eight there would be any number of reasons Kaveh could give in explanation of why he wasn’t ready to settle down. Ian wasn’t prepared to hear them, however, because he knew there was only one that served as the truth. This truth was a form of hypocrisy, and the presence of hypocrisy was central to every argument they’d had in the last year.

“Know what today is?” Ian asked, raising his glass again.

Kav nodded but he looked chagrined. “Day we met. I’d forgotten. Too much going on up at Ireleth Hall, I think. But then — ” He indicated the table. Ian knew he meant not only the setup but also the trouble he’d gone to with the dinner. “When I saw this, it came to me. And I feel like a bloody wretch, Ian. I’ve nothing for you.”

“Ah. No matter,” Ian told him. “What I want is right here and it’s yours to give.”

“You’ve already got it, haven’t you?”

“You know what I mean.”

Kaveh walked to the window and flicked the heavy closed curtains open a crack as if to check where the daylight had gone to, but Ian knew that he was trying to work out what it was he wanted to say and the thought that he might want to say what Ian didn’t want to hear caused his head to begin its telltale throbbing and a flash of bright stars to course across his vision. He blinked hard as Kaveh spoke.

“Signing a book in a registry office doesn’t make us any more official than we already are.”

“That’s bollocks,” Ian said. “It makes us more than official. It makes us legal. It gives us standing in the community and, what’s more important, it tells the world — ”

“We don’t need standing. We already have it as individuals.”

“ — and what’s more important,” Ian repeated, “it tells the world — ”

“Well that’s just it, isn’t it,” Kaveh said sharply. “The world, Ian. Think about it. The world. And everyone in it.”

Carefully, Ian set his wineglass on the table. He knew he should get the meat and carve it, get the veg and serve them, sit, eat, and let the rest go. Go upstairs afterwards and have each other properly. But on this night of all nights, he couldn’t bring himself to do anything more but say what he’d already said to his partner more than a dozen times and what he’d sworn he wouldn’t say tonight: “You asked me to come out and I did. For you. Not for myself, because it didn’t matter to me and even if it had, there were too many people involved and what I did — for you — was as good as stabbing them through their throats. And that was fine by me because it was what you wanted, and I finally realised — ”

“I know all this.”

“Three years is long enough to hide, you said. You said, ‘Tonight you decide.’ In front of them you said it, Kav, and in front of them I decided. Then I walked out. With you. Have you any idea — ”

“Of course I do. D’you think I’m a stone? I have a bloody idea, Ian. But we’re not talking about just living together, are we? We’re talking about marriage. And we’re talking about my parents.”

“People adjust,” Ian said. “That’s what you told me.”

“People. Yes. Other people. They adjust. But not them. We’ve been through this before. In my culture — their culture — ”

“You’re part of this culture now. All of you.”

“That’s not how it works. One doesn’t just flee to a foreign country, take some magic pill one night, and wake up the next morning with an entirely different system of values. It doesn’t happen that way. And as the only son — the only child, for God’s sake — I have… Oh Christ, Ian, you know all this. Why can’t you be happy with what we have? With how things are?”

“Because how things are is a lie. You’re not my lodger. I’m not your landlord. D’you actually think they’ll believe that forever?”

“They believe what I tell them,” he said. “I live here. They live there. This works and it will continue to work. Anything else, and they won’t understand. They don’t need to know.”

“So that they can do what? Keep presenting you with suitable Iranian teenagers to marry? Fresh off the boat or the plane or whatever and eager to give your parents grandbabies?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“It’s happening already. How many have they arranged for you to meet so far? A dozen? More? And at what point do you just cave in and marry because you can’t take the pressure from them any longer and you start to feel your duty too much and then what do you expect to have? One life here and another in Manchester, her down there — whoever she is — waiting for the babies and me up here and… goddamn it, look at me.” Ian wanted to kick the table over, sending the crockery flying and the cutlery spinning across the floor. Something was building within him, and he knew an explosion was on its way. He headed for the door, for the hallan that would take him to the kitchen and from there outside.

Kaveh’s voice was sharper when he said, “Where’re you going?”

“Out. The lake. Wherever. I don’t know. I just need to get out.”

“Come on, Ian. Don’t be this way. What we have — ”

“What we have is nothing.”

“That isn’t true. Come back and I’ll show you.”

But Ian knew where showing you would lead, which was where showing you always led, which was to a place having nothing to do with the change he sought. He left the house without looking back.

EN ROUTE TO BRYANBARROW CUMBRIA

Tim Cresswell slouched in the back seat of the Volvo. He tried to close his ears to the sound of his little sister begging their mother once again to let them live with her. “Please please extra pretty please, Mummy” was the way she put it. She was, Tim knew, trying to charm their mother into thinking she was actually missing something without her children in constant attendance. Not that anything Gracie might say or the way she might say it would do any good. Niamh Cresswell had no intention of allowing them to live with her in Grange-over-Sands. She had fish to fry that had nothing to do with any responsibility she might feel towards her offspring. Tim wanted to tell Gracie this, but what was the point? She was ten years old and too young to understand the workings of pride, loathing, and revenge.

“I hate Daddy’s house,” Gracie was adding in hopeful good measure. “There’re spiders everywhere. It’s dark and creaky and full of draughts and it’s got all these corners where there’re cobwebs and things. I want to live with you, Mummy. Timmy does ’s well.” She squirmed round in her seat. “You want to live with Mummy ’s well, don’t you, Timmy?”

Don’t call me Timmy, you stupid twit, was what Tim actually wanted to say to his sister, but he couldn’t ever get mad at Gracie when she looked at him with that expression of trusting love on her face. When he saw it, though, he wanted to tell her to harden up. The world was a shit hole, and he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t yet worked that out.

Tim saw that his mother was watching him in the rear view mirror, waiting to hear how he would answer his sister. He curled his lip and turned to the window, thinking that he could almost not blame his father for dropping the bomb that had destroyed their lives. His mother was a real piece of work, she was.

The bloody cow was acting true to character, even now, all pretence about why they were heading back to Bryan Beck farm. What she didn’t know was that he’d picked up the phone in the kitchen the exact same moment