Your Father Sends His Love (2 page)

‘Goodbye,' she said and began to walk home. He heard her stop, then walk back to him. She stood just behind, out of his range of vision.

‘Would you mind if I asked you a question?' she said.

‘What's that?' he said.

‘Why do you come here?' she said. ‘I mean, young lad like you. Sitting here all day long. All day on your own?'

He took another photograph of her; zoomed in close on her face. The photograph was pixelated, blurred as she moved her head. He looked at the screen. She was there in his hand.

‘To take photographs,' he said. ‘That's all.'

She looked down with eyes that sagged and a mouth unsure where it should settle. She nodded.

‘Can I see?' she said.

Years later, safe and snug in Luca's arms, he lies in the quiet of the room, the two of them coiled in sheets. It is after midnight and the plates and pans are stacked in the kitchen sink, left for morning. They have eaten osso buco, made by Luca, Elliot as sous chef, in honour of Luca's parents, flown in to visit. The flat is too small so the parents took a taxi to their hotel, kisses and fussing as they left. Luca dozes, too much wine with his dinner, unnecessary grappa. The wardrobe door is ajar; their
clothes hang side by side, still a surprise. On the floor are their jeans, soft legs on hard wood.

‘Can you not sleep?' Luca says.

‘I like your parents,' Elliot says. ‘Your father especially. I can see where you get it from.'

Like his father, Luca is a storyteller in several languages, a barroom flirt and centre of attention. His arms are hawserish, his body gym-built, protein-shook. But soft inside, so soft.

‘They liked you too,' Luca says. ‘That's what all the Italian was about. You.'

‘Me?'

‘Of course, what else?'

Luca moves his arm over Elliot's chest.

‘Sleep. It's late.'

‘My father was more the silent type,' Elliot says. ‘He would have struggled to get a word in edgeways tonight.'

Luca looks up from his pillow, red-gilled and sour-smelling. Hairless legs and chest uncovered, his buzz cut and cheekbones move towards Elliot.

‘My father can be a bit much,' Luca says. ‘He wasn't always like he is now, you know. It took him time. After I told him I mean.'

Elliot can feel the measure in Luca's words, the care not to seem leading. He is grateful for this, though he
feels the question beneath the calm. Others have been more explicit.

‘You have that faraway look,' Luca says. ‘Guilty schoolboy look. Hand out; smack me now, sir, look.'

Elliot puts his hand around his wrist, so thin now, better now, thin; hair too now, lots of hair on his body, worries once that there wasn't enough, or too much, and now no longer a worry; his penis no longer a cause for concern too, all those nights of anguish and just a cock now, and he looks at Luca waiting. The bedroom is close and silent.

What he wants to say is simple. He wants to say, ‘Luca, I am not a good man.' But he does not. Luca will only disagree, count the ways he is good. Elliot would like to shock Luca, but cannot.

Luca's arm is on his chest, his eyes pale grey and attentive. He waits.

‘My father was a good man,' Elliot says. ‘He was a good, good man.'

Three days later the woman stood beside him again, still dogless, wearing what looked like the same clothes.

‘Still here, then.'

‘Yes,' Elliot said. ‘I have more photographs, would you like to see?'

He scrolled through the images, back, back and handed her the phone. She was quick, did not take her time, and with this Elliot was disappointed. She passed back the phone.

‘I liked the other ones more,' she said. ‘You have an eye for people.'

‘I wondered if you'd notice anything,' he said. ‘It's only something small. You know, like one of those spot-the-difference puzzles. Look again?'

He put the phone back in her hand and stood behind her as she swiped. She finished the set and worked backwards. She pushed out her tongue in concentration, the way his father did while working a screwdriver.

‘What am I looking for?' she said.

‘You'll either see it or you won't. It took me a few times before I noticed it. I don't know how many times.'

On the fourth run-through, she paused and swiped back, forward, back.

‘I think I see something,' she said. ‘Is it this?'

She zoomed in on one of the unfinished houses. Elliot nodded.

‘Well spotted,' he said.

‘When you see it, it's obvious,' she said, swiping forward until the house was clearly three feet higher than it had been in the earlier image.

‘You're quite the detective,' she said.

‘My name's Elliot,' he said.

‘I'm Clare,' she said.

‘It's nice to meet you, Clare,' he said. ‘I'm glad you came back. I wanted to say thank you.'

The woman puffed out her cheeks.

‘Thank me for what?'

‘Last time you saw my photographs, you said I had a good eye. I should have said thank you.'

‘Well, you're welcome,' she said and laughed; a chirp, used for batting away the odd compliment. ‘I think you're better with people. Those ones of the three builders were really something.'

Elliot looked up at the woman. The conversations they might have. She turned to the development, to Lakelands, and shook her head.

‘Well that didn't take long,' she said, nodding towards the site. Elliot turned to see five kids running between the bricks and foundations.

‘There'll be an accident,' she said. ‘You mark my words.'

Elliot picked up the phone and began taking photographs.

‘Don't you join them,' she said. ‘Don't you get yourself hurt.'

‘I won't,' he said.

‘See you around,' she said.

He heard the front door open then shut, and from his bedroom window looked down on his father, holdall on his back, hands inside his jacket, toe-cap boots dangled around his neck. The father stoop, the father shuffle. Elliot dressed and put on his trainers at the front door, decided against the bike. The streets were cool, sodium-lit, lamps behind curtains and blinds, no cars on the roads at this hour, a motorbike whine somewhere in the distance. They had lived in towns where there had been sirens at night, but this was not one of them. Remember the police cars? Remember the ambulances, all day and all night? Never heard anything like it, not even when your mum and me lived in Newcastle those years.

Through the park he half ran, avoiding dog shit, a spray of vomit, a smashed bottle of something. The playground was in the process of being rebuilt, made safe; the bowls club was locked tight, graffiti ghosting beneath its recent paint job.

On the council estate he kept his head down and turned the familiar streets. He thought of the woman on the hill, her voice's knowing timbre as she passed back the
phone. She knew. It was all there in the photographs. All those close-regarded arms and legs, strained neck muscles, strip-shirted boys with tattoos and smooth-hardened stomachs. (Many years later, when asked by yet another straight man how he'd finally come out, he'd just said it was the moment he showed a strange woman some of his photography.)

Elliot breached the crest and looked down onto Lakelands. His father was working a plot close to the lake. He had a storm lamp set up, a board of mortar in his left hand and a trowel in the other. Elliot zoomed in on his father's working face, its wild vacancy. The soft light, the scrape of the mortar, the laying of brick. He took hours. Sweated hours. The bricks stacking, flush and red. His father must have laid hundreds before sitting down against the wall and taking a can of beer from his holdall.

The fence was easier than he'd thought to scale; but the drop was long and hitting the ground felt like it would shatter his feet and shins. He lay at the foot of the fence. The light from the storm lamp was uninterrupted by shadows. Elliot walked slowly towards it. His father was damp faced and pale. He did not look surprised as Elliot sat beside him.

‘Dad?'

‘I was just thinking,' his father said. ‘You remember
how your mother used to hate me drinking out of cans? Used to say, “You're not on the building site now, love, get a bloody glass.” '

He laughed.

‘You remember that?'

‘Yes,' Elliot said.

‘Of course you do,' he said. ‘You remember everything, you.'

He drank from the can.

‘Did you follow me?' he asked.

‘Yes,' Elliot said. ‘I heard the door go, saw you leave. I was worried.'

‘You knew?'

‘I guessed. You've not been right these last couple of days.'

‘Remember when your mum failed her driving test?'

‘She cried for days.'

‘Yes, she did. Soppy cow, your mother.'

He hadn't mentioned the driving test in years. Driving even. His father drank his beer and shook his head.

‘It's just a job, but still. This time. You know? I thought it had to be this time. Got to be this time. But.'

He laughed and shook his head.

‘Just for once,' he said, ‘I wanted to do something for us, you know? Get something that was ours. The two of us—'

‘Dad,' Elliot said. ‘I need to tell you something.'

His father put his can in the dirt and sat up. He was straight backed. A schoolboy, hands out.

‘What's that, son?'

‘It's important. I need to tell you something.'

He laughed and grabbed the boy by the arm. He hugged the boy close to him, beer and sweat and the father smell.

‘It's going to be okay, son. I promise you that. I love you. I love you to the ends of the earth, no matter what. You know that, don't you?'

‘Of course.'

‘So tell me. Tell me your news.'

And he did. And his father held him close. And his father said, ‘To the ends of the earth, son. To the ends of the earth.'

Luca runs his fingers through Elliot's hair. Elliot is allowed to stop here; Luca has given him silent permission. They are enough, these words. They slay the fears. A good man.