Blue-Eyed Stranger, page 19
While the musicians didn’t mind roughing it too much for themselves, cruelty to their instruments was another matter. They had come off to dry the hearpe and kantele and absolutely refused to go back on.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the unit director to Martin, summoning a minion. Martin watched him go and came back to sit with the rest of the group in their tired and cold huddle around the heater.
“I’m sorry,” Martin said, “I thought this would be more glamorous.”
“Not a problem.” Matt smiled at Martin and then at Billy. “I hear congratulations are in order?”
Billy stiffened, caught in the spotlight of the group’s attention, feeling the rare sensation of being very visible indeed. What would Martin say? This, this was his first chance to get it right. Would he flub it?
Martin too looked as pinned as a butterfly against a board. He visibly braced himself, swallowing. “Well, I’m not sure.”
Billy frowned.
“I mean, Billy and I just moved in together. I’m not sure if that warrants congratulations.”
A deep breath, and when he sighed it out, Billy could feel a profound oppression flowing out of him. Martin had meant it. He had said he would stop being ashamed, and he was speaking the truth.
“You’re . . . together?” Christine looked between the two of them with bright birdlike movements, evidently not sure she was putting the pieces together right.
“Oh, Chris.” Annette got to her feet. “Were you the last to know?”
She enveloped Billy and then Martin in a slightly damp hug, and asked the important question. “So, Martin, when are you joining the Griffins?”
Billy laughed aloud. He saw Martin’s face light up with joy at the sound, and then he was being hugged. Hugged, in public, lifted around the waist and swung. His laugh caught on itself and became a happiness so poignant it felt like anguish. He held on tight and told himself that now he never had to let go.
He hadn’t expected this. Finn had told him to fight, but fighting for his own rights was not Billy’s thing. If anything, he had expected that such a severe crash, the knowledge that he was dangerous to himself and to others, would have driven Martin away altogether. He still couldn’t believe the man could possibly love the spineless wet jellyfish mess that was him.
But he must, mustn’t he? He had seen how much pain his denial had caused Billy—he had seen Billy’s feelings clear all the way through—and that had been enough to change him. He wasn’t someone against whom Billy had to fight, and Billy was so grateful, so incredibly grateful for that. Clearly he had meant all those anguished, passionate things he had said. For some unfathomable reason, he must love Billy. Probably the only man in the world who could.
“All right, then.” The unit director had reappeared. Martin put Billy down with a slight wince that Billy forgave when he made no attempt to drop Billy’s hand.
One of the crew handed Billy an oval lump of wood with a hole cut out of it and strings nailed over the hole. A second triangular plank went to Annette. “The props department knocked these up. We’ll record the music separately in the studio as you suggested. Incidentally, the costumes are looking good on the rushes. Very believable. If you have more contacts, we could do with twenty warriors for a tavern fight scene in three weeks. Ever since Lord of the Rings made us all look bad, you just can’t get away with the knitted chain mail anymore.”
“That would be brilliant.” Martin beamed. “My other society, Bretwalda, would be more than happy to provide up to thirty fully kitted warriors if you need them.”
He looked at Billy, and his smile fell, obviously remembering that he hadn’t told Bretwalda yet. That he didn’t know how they would react. That he didn’t know if he would still have authority to make any decision for them in three weeks’ time.
“At least, I think they would. I have a few issues that need discussing with them first.”
Billy pushed back his damp hair with a cold hand, leaned his forehead against his palm, and refused to feel guilty. Absolutely refused.
Martin had begun to move things into Billy’s flat—a chest of drawers by the side of the bed full of his clothes, a new layer of books on his bookshelves. On Saturday, when neither of them had a show, they’d rigged up a temporary shelter of tent groundsheets in the house’s desolate backyard and moved Martin’s reenactment equipment into it. He kept waiting for Billy to object to this amalgamation of their households, kept trying not to take it as positive proof of forgiveness when Billy smiled instead. He wished he was absolutely certain that he knew where he stood with Billy, but he didn’t really deserve that yet.
When he had moved as much as he could fit into the tiny rooms, there were other things left that he could not leave behind when the new tenants of his flat moved in. Which meant . . .
“Hi, Dad.” Martin was sitting on the floor in front of the sofa where Billy was pretending to read a book about musical notation in the Middle Ages. He leaned back and Billy bracketed him with his long legs, so that he felt he was being hugged. He needed it right now. “How did the party go?”
“As if you would phone me to find that out. I presume you have spoken to your sister about it at least twice by now.”
That’s not the point, Dad. Martin thought. I’m making small talk. It’s something that people do to paper over awkward situations. He sighed. Already this was not going well.
“All right,” he said, and linked both arms around Billy’s calves. Billy reached down to lay a reassuring hand on his head. “Then the reason that I’m phoning is to tell you that I’m selling my flat and moving in with somebody, and to ask if you and Mum could look after some of my things.”
“You’re moving in with someone?” There was the flicker of something like approval beneath his father’s surprise, and Martin breathed in deep and breathed out hard to calm himself before he forced himself over the next hurdle. “Who is she? What does she do?”
The fingers on his head burrowed into his hair and stroked along his scalp calmingly. He raised his free hand and covered them, trying to absorb some of their strength. Closed his eyes. “His name’s Billy, Dad. I thought it was time I should tell you that I’m gay.”
Silence. Some imp of perversity prompted him to finish, “Oh, and he’s unemployed.”
More silence. Martin waited for a tirade, the tiny, tiny little part of himself that still hoped for acceptance and kindness faltering and dying in his chest.
Nothing on the line. “Dad?”
And then the dialling tone.
Martin took the phone away from his ear and looked at it in disbelief. He redialled and it was engaged. Or off the hook.
“What happened?” Billy leaned down to touch his shoulder, mantling over him like a hen over her chicks.
“He . . . he hung up.”
“Are you all right?”
Martin didn’t know. There was a kindly void in his head and his chest, where this didn’t register at all, and then came anger, and he was so, so grateful for that. “Yes, I’m fine. I knew. I knew this could happen, and I said, ‘Fuck him anyway.’ And fuck him anyway, you know? Fuck him anyway, the old bigot. I just wanted to tell him, ‘I’m not in fucking Sudan, Dad! I can be what I want here, and I’m bloody well going to. So suck it.’ You know?”
“I’m sorry.”
Martin scrambled off the floor and swarmed onto the sofa until he was all but sitting on Billy’s lap. Since this, they had found by previous experimentation, crushed all the blood out of Billy’s legs, they fell over sideways by mutual agreement, and found themselves lying side by side, tangled together in a weave of need and reassurance. “It’s not your fault. I was gay before you met me, you know? I had to tell him some time. This way I can do it in your arms and that makes it easier. I’m tired of him tyrannizing over me, and if this is one way of getting rid of him, then so be it.”
There was an ache in the pit of his belly that suggested he didn’t actually mean that, but he ignored it. As he was trying to smile, his phone rang in his pocket.
“Dad?”
“It’s Mum.”
He was ashamed to say he had forgotten about her, a busy woman who loved them both distantly when she looked up from her craft projects and noticed they were there. He prayed hard she wouldn’t blame herself for this, but at least she was still talking to him, right? “Hi, Mum. I’m sorry I—”
“Shh,” she interrupted him. “I’ve just locked myself in the loo, so I’ve got about five minutes before he realizes I’m actually phoning you. So let me just say that I guessed years ago and that he’ll come round. I presume Sheena already knows?”
“Yes, Mum.” Sheena had known for the last ten years, since she caught him and Ed McMinn experimenting with kissing when they were fourteen years old.
“Well, it’s good that the secret’s out. That’ll be one less thing for her to carry.”
Martin hadn’t thought of that, and it made him feel lighter, as if someone had turned up the sunlight over the golden acres of wheat outside. “Should I phone Dad back?”
“No.” His mum actually laughed, fond and wise. “He’s having a bit of a flap at the moment. Give him a month or so. Let him cool down. Then . . . I don’t know. Invite us to visit your new place, perhaps, and meet him, this chap. Daddy will be too curious to resist, and he’ll have remembered by then that he can’t do without you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“He loves you very much, you know.” The words came accompanied by the sound of pouring water. She was faking washing her hands. Time was running out, so he didn’t say, I know you always say that, but I haven’t seen any evidence of it. Perhaps she knew her husband better than anyone else in the world, and it was a comforting thought.
“Mum . . .” God, would he never stop crying? His eyes were leaking again as he tried to think of a way to tell her how much this little stolen phone call meant to him. “Thank you.”
“Anytime, sweetie. I love you very much too.”
“I love you too, Mum. Thank you.”
“Shh,” she said again, a little tearful herself now, by the sound of it. “What are mothers for? Speak to you soon. Bye.”
“Bye,” he said, but she had already rung off, leaving him still angry with his father, but with that ache in his stomach profoundly relieved.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Billy asked, slowly undoing the buttons of Martin’s shirt so he could push his comforting hands inside and stroke them over Martin’s skin.
Was he all right? On consideration . . . “I think it could have gone worse,” he admitted, hope and his mother’s words beginning to fill in the void over which his anger had roared. If his father came round, Martin would be ready to forgive him, like an equal, like the fellow adult that he was. Perhaps standing up to him would make the man realize that Martin had grown up now, that he shouldn’t be treated as a child anymore. That was almost a pleasant thought.
Also pleasant was the weight of Billy’s body, the long legs tangled between his, and those long talented fingers drawing music out of his lower back and his hips. “I think only my pride is hurt,” he decided eventually. “And maybe you could kiss that better?”
The sun shone bright over Cambridge County Fair, though the wind was so cold and so brisk they’d had to double-guy all the shelters. Martin stood by his firebox, glad of the warmth on his legs, and sipped at the beaker of coffee he had told the last member of the public was holly bark boiled in goats’ milk—a treatment for asthma.
They had pitched on a slight rise and could see down over the parched stubble of the field to where the young braves of Bretwalda were practising their sword craft under the admiring gaze of a couple of grannies. It was a moment out of time. The whirr of Saebriht’s pole lathe provided a rhythmical accompaniment to the sound of Christine from the Early Dance Group playing something soft and plaintive on her bone whistle. The wind stretched out the flags over the camp and hummed in the throat of the dragon standard. Maybe it came from the sea, because it carried a feeling of departure, of freedom, unanchored from past or present. It carried hope.
And so did Billy, as he came striding up the beaten dirt path with his top hat on and his ragged jacket slung casually over his shoulder. He’d already taken off the face paint, looked open and reachable as he paused a moment to be sure no one was watching, then ducked under the ropes and disappeared into Martin’s tent.
As always, he moved like a wild beast, an odd combination of graceful, shy, and powerful. But his smile was all human—nuanced and wry and a little bit vulnerable as he returned to the place that had rejected him before.
“Guys?” Martin raised his voice to alert the elders of his society, each watching over their own displays, knowledgeable and ready to talk to anyone who was interested. “Can I have a word?”
They came in under the canvas roof and drew close to the fire, all of them slightly dirty, with soot under their fingernails, ground in soil and mud and sweat in their garments. Even the civilians of the society, who didn’t fight at all, were tougher, more capable than ordinary people. Wrapped in their cloaks, knives at their belts, surrounded by a world they’d made with their own hands . . . they were precious to him. He valued their respect, and he couldn’t do this alone.
Ducking his head through the flap of his tent, he saw Billy had shucked his dancing costume and was just buckling a belt around his full-skirted Saxon tunic. They came into the work shelter together, and Martin could see the conclusions being drawn long before he opened his mouth.
“So. I think most of you were there when I had a bit of a meltdown at Hunstanton, right?”
Murmurs of assent, and he hoped also approval. The guys liked things straightforward, laid on the table without deceit. “You caught me by surprise. I said some stuff I meant, but I also said some stuff I really didn’t mean.”
Edith caught his eye, looked between him and Billy, meaningfully.
“Yes,” he agreed, reaching out to take Billy’s hand. He’d been practising, over the past two weeks, allowing himself to make little gestures of affection that couldn’t be misinterpreted, but that had been in front of an uncaring public. In front of people who didn’t know who he was. This time it was important, and it felt . . . it felt like maybe the bravest thing he’d ever done.
Billy squeezed his hand reassuringly, and that helped.
“So yes, I am going out with Billy. That’s not going to change, and if you don’t like it, well, frankly, you can fuck off.”
He didn’t want to pause, but his throat closed over breathlessness, and he had to take a moment to ease it enough to breathe in again.
No shocked looks. One or two people glanced down, picked at their hands or their shoes, but there were no overt grimaces. No laughter.
He didn’t give it any time to get started. “I am going to continue with the Early Dance Group. I mentioned to some of you earlier that, far from being a threat to Bretwalda, it’s actually good publicity. It’s already got us some film work, which should be a nice little earner. So that’s not going to stop either.”
Time to put the ball firmly back in their court, give them something to think about other than his obvious inadequacies. “What this means is that I can’t do quite as much as I have been doing for Bretwalda. I’m happy to carry on arranging the food and the firewood, but I can’t afford to keep a car running to bring the work shelter and cooking gear, so that needs to go home with someone else. I can’t carry on doing everything, so either we’re going to have a meeting this evening where we’re going to decide what jobs need to be done and who’s going to do them or you can tell me now you don’t want me to be in charge anymore, and I’ll step down at once. That works for me too. I’m fine with just turning up as a grunt and letting someone else take over. But then that someone else is going to have to be one of you.”
Billy’s hand felt scalding in his own. He’d never felt so on show before, and for a black Viking, that was saying something. He didn’t even know if he’d been forgiven yet—if he was taking a chance that might lead to him losing Bretwalda and then losing Billy anyway. But that didn’t matter. (It mattered very much.) Because he’d promised. This was what he had to do to earn forgiveness, so this was what he was doing.
Then Edith smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We all realized, I think, that we’d been asking too much of you, and then we made fun too. I’m not surprised you were cross. We’ll go away and think about this, come back this evening with some ideas. But you’ll stay in charge while we make the changes? Because I think if you just left, the whole thing would fall apart, and we’ve only just started to get going.”
The sense of relief was indescribable. He’d been prepared to leave, right now. Pack up all his stuff and go. Start again by reenacting some other historical era, maybe, though he couldn’t think of one he liked as well as this. “Is that what everyone thinks?”
“You’re a fucking wanker.” Rolf tossed a handful of pine cones onto the fire. He made a sharp, exaggerated gesture in Billy’s direction. “What d’you think this is, the nineteen fifties? You could have just fucking told us. It’s not like anyone cares.”
Billy watched Martin relax and gathered that that had been a more reassuring comment than it seemed to him. Even now, Martin’s people weren’t exactly looking at Billy himself—he existed to them as a known fact rather than a person. But that didn’t matter as long as he hadn’t damaged Martin’s relationship with them. He was happy to be nothing more than Martin’s other half in their eyes, as long as they acknowledged that he existed and that he had a claim over Martin too.
They’d returned to the doctor after his blood tests came back, and he’d been given a prescription for antidepressants, along with the warning that this was only a first try, and that finding the right combination of drugs could take a while. But so far his experience with them had been pretty good.
