Driftwood (6 page)

Thomas opened his mouth to refuse.
What am I meant to do with you and the lads in a bloody airbase pub?
But Flynn bestowed on him a smile of such persuasive sweetness that the protest melted on his lips. “We'll be there around seven,” he said. They both stood in silence for a moment. Thomas could not have said what they were waiting for. Flynn, still smiling, was interrogating his gaze, brow furrowing, lower lip caught in his teeth. He looked almost hopeful—and thoroughly confused. When the shifting wind brought rotor roar to them once more, he let go Thomas's arm with a faint, near-guilty start. “I've got to get back,” he murmured, and turning away, set off at a jog through the crowd. Steadying himself on the Rover's wing mirror, Thomas watched him go.

He had no idea what to wear. He worried about it briefly, staring into a seldom-used full-length mirror in his bedroom, then shook his head in impatience. Suppose he dressed up, who would that be for? Flynn was—comprehensively—taken, and even had it been otherwise, Thomas could not imagine a world in which their lives could possibly converge. He was damaged goods, a battered war vet with OCD and an incipient booze problem. He wouldn't lay a hand on Flynn's bright young life, even if he could.

Clean and reasonably well-ironed would have to do. Thomas took one of his white linen shirts out of the wardrobe in which hung five others exactly like it and issued himself one of five sets of identical black cords. He checked that Belle had water, biscuits and her favourite rubber toy, and apologised to her—she was no more prepared than he was for him to be spending an evening out.

Out, for God's sake, with a wild bunch of RNAS flyboys and hotshots, and Robert Tremaine, who for all his bonhomie and surface charm, would plainly have liked to deck him at the fairground that afternoon.

Thomas smiled wryly. Flynn wanted him there, and he owed him one friendly act. Then it would be over.

Over before it started, almost. Thomas walked into the Fox in Breagh village and nearly turned and walked straight out again. The racket hit him like a brick. He realised with a shock how long it had been since he had ventured into even the quietest of pubs, and this place was rocking, U2 blasting out of the speakers, the unrestrained shouting and laughter of military men off duty. A few beleaguered women too, Thomas noted, making his way through the crowd, although they also looked as if they belonged to the base.

The whole place had more the air of an army canteen than a Cornish bar. It was modern, and utilitarian in structure, harsh neon lights glaring. Pretty horrible, really, he wryly reflected, asking himself once again—as he had half a dozen times on the road down from his lonely, sea-swept coast—why he had accepted Flynn's invitation. Now he was here—and his arrival hadn't gone unnoticed, a few heads turning to check out the civilian entering the RNAS den—he would have to make a decent show of it. He'd timed his arrival for half an hour later than Flynn's estimated seven o'clock, in the hope of not getting there first, but it didn't seem to have worked.

Had he always been like this? Diffident, barely able to hold his head up in a noisy crowd? Suddenly Thomas was annoyed with himself. Probably he laid too much at the door of his experiences in Helmand. Yes, he'd always been shy. But he'd had the grace to hide it, to reach back to offered friendliness. It didn't really matter that Flynn wasn't here. And this might be a Navy pub, but they didn't own it and could just put up with him while he had a drink at the bar like a normal person.

A warmth at his elbow. Thomas felt it through the rolled-back sleeve of his shirt. He turned around, smiling.
Yes.

“I didn't think you'd come.”

The room was very warm. Thomas wondered if that had set the colour under Flynn's tan, but as he watched, it faded. God, was this still a world in which he could make someone flush with pleasure at his arrival? He pushed the idea away. Flynn could just as well have been regretting the invitation, embarrassed that he had turned up.

“Well,” Thomas said. “I wanted to talk to you. I didn't get the chance to explain, about the sculpture.”

It was strange, he thought. The crush at the bar was one shade off a rugby scrum, but it felt as if the two of them were quite alone. He doubted the harried bartender would ever notice them, especially since neither he nor Flynn seemed able to spare attention to catch his eye. He had managed to commandeer a barstool, and Flynn had squeezed in beside him so that they were elbow-to-elbow on the beer-soaked formica surface.

“You don't have to. I was down in Marazion that afternoon, and I must've still had water on my brain—not because I bought you something, I mean. To go over the top and embarrass you.”

“Oh, it didn't. At least…” Thomas shook his head. “Not in that way, though I know how much those pieces cost. I meant to return it to you personally, to explain. Then things went a bit…” he searched for an expression to convey the debacle at the Hawke Lake barricade, “…a bit pear-shaped, and I ended up dumping it with the guard on the main gate. I'm sorry.”

Flynn laughed. “I can imagine the scene. In fact, Junior Seaman Davis described it in detail when he brought the parcel to my barracks. He said you looked ready to take on the whole airbase, one man at a time. They're silly bastards. Forget about them.” A movement in the crowd threatened to knock Thomas off his barstool, and Flynn stretched out a warning hand to shield him. “Christ, what a bunch of thugs. We'll go somewhere quieter in a minute. Just…just tell me one thing. Did you like it?”

“What?” Thomas asked stupidly. He had been too caught up in watching his companion's easy grace. He'd seen him so far in a wetsuit and an unbecoming orange flying kit. In his civvies—just a black T-shirt and jeans, but outlining every plane and curve of his shoulders, his hips—he was distracting. Like the sculpture, pleasing from all angles. Renewing his charm with each motion. “Oh, the… Yes. I loved it, actually. Was it okay? Could you return it all right?”

“Er… Yes. Yes, sure. Come on, let me get you a drink. What'll you have?”

“Thanks. Just an orange, please.”

“You'll need more than that to get you through a night with this lot.”

Thomas glanced round him at the pandemonium, smiling. “Probably, but I'm driving.”

“You can still have one.”

“No, I can't.” Thomas kept his smile in place, but felt Flynn's attention refocus upon him—a quick, gentle concern, a warm readiness of perception he hardly knew how to bear. He did not want to tell this new friend that
just one
, on a night like this, would trigger the next fifteen or so, and maybe Flynn knew already—had heard in the village shop that the Sankerris GP sometimes went on discreet, off-duty three-day benders. Struggling to keep it light, he said, with mock solemnity, “I'm a doctor, Flynn. It's my job to preserve life.”

“Yes, but not in bloody formaldehyde, Doc!” A big hand landed on Thomas's shoulder. He jumped, hard, and felt Flynn move imperceptibly to steady him. Rob Tremaine had erupted from the crowd behind them, grinning maniacally, plainly three sheets to the wind. “Bill,” he yelled to the bartender, who dropped a glass as if it had scalded him and abandoned the customer he'd been serving. “Pint for me and for Flynn, and make the doc's a screwdriver. And bring them out the back, for God's sake—I can't hear myself think in this circus.”

The pub had a small beer garden, more of a yard, fenced around with concrete-poured walls similar to the ones that enclosed the airbase. Security concerns, Thomas wondered, trailing Rob and Flynn outside, or maybe an attempt to shield the neighbouring houses.

“Is it always like this?” he asked, watching Tremaine steer Flynn to a table, a proprietorial hand planted on his spine, aware that, if he did not take care, he would find himself disliking Tremaine intensely.

Flynn glanced round at him, smiling wryly, perhaps reading the thought. “No. Special occasion. Birthday.”

“Oh.” Thomas took a seat at the wooden trestle. He thought that Tremaine, settling opposite, would have pulled Flynn onto his lap if he could. Fine with Thomas, if Flynn had not looked uncomfortable, stiff with resistance in his grasp. “Yours?”

“No, mine,” Tremaine boomed, lifting his pint. “Cheers, lads. Drink up. No, Flynnie here's a February baby, a merry…” He trailed off suddenly, as if catching himself about to commit a faux pas.

“A merrybegot?” Thomas finished for him. He had knocked back his drink without noticing, and could feel the familiar dangerous sparkle in his blood. That
was
old Cornish. And now that he'd listened to him for a while, Tremaine was hiding a good old West Country drawl beneath his officer-class RP. Come to think of it, Thomas recognised the name. Recognised
him
, he thought.

“A merrybegot's a baby conceived in May,” he explained to Flynn, who was looking bewildered. “Off in the greenwood after a Beltane ceremony.” He gave Flynn a smile from which he could not hide a trace of tenderness. “They'd arrive in February, with the lambs. Considered blessed by the gods. Robert, you've got to be one of the old Sankerris Bay Tremaines, to know that.”

Robert stared at him. Thomas hadn't meant to take the wind from his sails, but he wasn't sorry to see it go. “Yeah,” he said, then, clearly regretting the unguarded response, “No. That is, I am, but from the London branch. Moved away from here to make money centuries ago and never looked back.”

Thomas let it go, but he found he was amused. Plainly this great sophisticated airman was scabby little Bobby Tremaine, descendant of a family of notorious seventeenth-century moonrakers. Thomas should know, having not only treated the current little scions of the race for fleas and malnutrition, and arranged social care where necessary, but being descended himself from an equally infamous rival smuggling gang, whose territory had overlapped theirs, with violent results. Penroses and Tremaines, fighting tooth and claw for contraband, luring ships to their doom on the rocks of Sankerris cove. He used to run the streets with Bobby, although even then, with the ruthless pack instincts of childhood, he and his friends had distanced themselves from the Bay kids, their poverty and disasters. You'd play with them, but not invite them home. The family face was distinct. Thomas wondered why Tremaine was lying.

Ashamed of his old prejudices, his readiness to judge, Thomas smiled at him. He was the last person to object, if someone had chosen some other life than the one he'd been born with. “Well,” he said. “Happy birthday. I'll go and get a round in.”

By the time he got back, Rob and Flynn were nowhere to be seen. He set the drinks on the trestle table, reflecting grimly how much easier it had been to thread the crowd and make his presence known at the bar with even one shot of alcohol inside him, how much easier still to get back if he'd magicked his second orange juice into a screwdriver too. What had stopped him was the knowledge that, if he did, he'd have to find somewhere in Breagh to spend the night. What he did to himself was his own business, but there the harm stopped.

He seemed to have lost his hosts anyway. Well, Tremaine had looked ready to drag Flynn off to his lair. Thomas's stomach lurched at the thought, but he told himself that he was relieved. He could get out of here now.

There was an archway to the left of the doors back into the pub. Thomas thought it led to the toilets and then through to the front and the car park. A delicate May dusk had fallen, a violet cobweb behind the glaring white arc light the pub management was keeping trained on the outdoor revellers. The entrance to the passage was stark black in its shadow, from this angle at least. To those better placed at the other tables scattered around the yard, whatever it held was apparently of some interest, and as Thomas drew closer, he picked up the distinct sound of an argument begun in discreet whispers, starting to escalate to shouts.

Well, Tremaine was shouting. Flynn's voice was in there—trying, Thomas thought, to make a point—but he was still sober, and his low-voiced fervour wasn't carrying against the tide. Thomas heard,
who does he think
, and
what did you bring him here for
, and did his very best to stop listening. None of his business, even if Rob was doing his best to make it that way, and he didn't want to add to the performance. Flynn and Tremaine were drawing enough attention on their own. Glancing round the crowd, Thomas saw a few benign smiles, as if this might be a regular sideshow on airbase nights out, but only a few. The older men—higher-ranking officers, presumably—looked grim in a way that did not promise any good to Rob's career or Flynn's. Locking his gaze to the ground, Thomas took his jacket off the trestle bench and checked for his car keys. Definitely time for him to go.

A gasp from the archway's shadows. It wouldn't have slowed Thomas down, except that he wouldn't have thought Flynn could sound like that. Outraged, yes, and that was the bulk of the message. But under it—tiny, fleeting, a flash Thomas wondered if he'd imagined. Yes, fear.

Flynn, though elegant, looked tough as nails. Nobody's pushover. For Thomas, that abruptly made it worse. What the hell hold did Rob have on him? Dropping his coat, he strode over to the passageway entrance, ignoring the hoots and warning shouts from the crowd.

Okay, that kind of hold. Not unexpected, though he could hardly believe Tremaine had been mad enough to try it here. He was grasping Flynn by the hair at the back of his neck, and if he'd got away with one forced kiss, Flynn was definitely not having any of the next. His hands were planted flat to Tremaine's chest.

Without conscious thought on the subject, Thomas decided enough was enough. He grabbed Rob's shoulder. “Hoi,” he said, his own old Cornish burr rising through his manners and his surgery veneer. “Flynn, is this bastard bothering you?”

Tremaine spun on him with a snarl. Thomas was surprised at the purity of hatred on his face. Flynn, released, almost fell over. “Shit,” he gasped. “Thomas, for God's sake. Get out of here. I can handle him.”