Fireflies (28 page)

‘Bullshit!’

‘Yes he did’.

‘Dad blamed me for Mum’s death and he resented me because I survived when Mum didn’t’.

‘He did love you in his own way’ Eric insisted.

‘Oh the usual clichéd excuse’.

‘He just couldn’t show it’.

‘And that’s supposed to be a comfort?’

‘Take it how you like’ said Eric. ‘You’re far too emotional. That’s always been your trouble’.

‘Oh I’m sorry but I didn’t think that expecting my father to show me that he loved me was being too emotional but that’s the standard line from those who can’t show emotion. Eric, my feelings are real and they come from a place of truth that recognizes that people get hurt and they need help and doesn’t deny them what they feel’.

‘
Well look, eat up so I can do the pots and have everything cleared away before Mary gets back’.

‘And that’s all you’ve got to say? Eric, you and I grew up in two different homes within the same house. There was you and Dad in one and there was me in the other. I’ve been alone all my life because Dad was a complete emotional illiterate’.

‘Simon, I’ll give you a lift to the bus stop on the main road but be careful. Someone got mugged and quite badly beaten on that road last Saturday night’.

Simon had to concede defeat. Eric was doing his usual trick of changing the subject when he just wasn’t interested. Simon had had a lifetime of it and knew there was no good fighting it. ‘You’ll have had a few glasses of wine by then, Eric’.

‘Oh yes, so I will. I was forgetting. Well will you be able to make your own way to the main road? Watch yourself though. They haven’t caught whoever did it yet’.

‘By the way, Eric, are you and Mary still going to church every Sunday morning?’

‘Oh yes’ Eric confirmed. ‘Mary especially is well in with the new priest Father Harrison. That’s where she is now. She’s at a meeting of his inner circle who run the parish’.

As he walked down the street from Eric’s house, Simon wondered what whoever this Father Harrison would say if he knew that one of his inner
circle was refusing to help out her homeless and broke brother-in-law. He wondered what her beloved Jesus would have to say about it, especially when Jesus knew how much Simon had helped out his brother and sister-in-law in the past when they were starting out and had two kids to bring up without two pennies to rub together. Simon had once got himself into debt so that he could make sure his niece and nephew had food on the table. How quickly the receivers of kindness forget when the boot is on the other foot.

The shopping mall downtown isn’t the sort of place to walk around if you haven’t got any money. Simon had maintained a tight budgeting regime which meant that after his full English at the b and b he didn’t eat again until around four or five. In the meantime he’d spend a lot of time in newsagents reading the magazines he used to buy and working out that he had enough cash for another few days. Then there would a three day gap before his dole payment went into his bank account and he wouldn’t have anything to pay the b and b with. Could Eric help again? He doubted it. He didn’t want to ask him anyway. He didn’t want that feeling of hearing his own brother say no. He was running out of clean clothes too, especially underwear and socks. But a trip to the launderette cost eight quid and so that would have to wait until his dole payment was made.

He’d applied for so many jobs he couldn’t remember exactly how many. Most of them hadn’t even bothered to reply to his application whilst others said he was over qualified. Some sent the usual bullshit reply of ‘we’ve had so many applications blah, blah,
blah’ but he was sure that with some of them it was his age that let him down. It’s hard for the young to find work but it’s also hard for the over 50s too unless they wanted to work in a DIY store and he’d tried there. They weren’t hiring for the moment.

He was just coming out of another shop in which he couldn’t afford to buy anything when he got the shock of his life.

‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed.

Mitchell ‘Mitch’ Randall was standing there large as life, six foot tall, still with his Ben Cohen build, handsome with a few more lines and a bit less hair but still everything Simon had ever wanted and still with the power to make his heart miss a beat. It was as if he’d just stepped out of his subconscious. He’d been thinking a lot about Mitch recently. He always had done. He was the love of his life.

‘Simon!’ Mitch exclaimed. He put his arms round him in a bear hug. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine, just fine’ said Simon who wondered why his path had to cross with Mitch right at this time when he was feeling such a hopeless failure. ‘You look … well you look really well’.

‘Thank you’ said Mitch. ‘I am well. I’m just up here visiting my sister Dawn for a couple of days. How come you’ve still got a full head of hair? That’s not fair. I’m starting to lose mine a bit as you can see’.

‘It doesn’t matter’ said Simon, smiling. ‘Are you still in the RAF?’

‘The RAF?’ Mitch questioned as if puzzled by the question. ‘No. I left the forces years ago. Flying those fighter jets is a young man’s game and I didn’t want a desk job at the MoD which is where they’d have sent me if I’d stayed’.

‘So what are you doing now?’

‘I retrained as a commercial pilot and joined Virgin. I’m a Captain now on the Airbus fleet. I do Hong Kong, LA, that sort of thing’.

Simon smiled nervously ‘That sort of thing. It seems like a different world to me’.

‘But you’ve travelled’.

‘Not much lately’.

‘Are you still with the low fares travel agent on St. Peters Street?’

‘No’ said Simon. ‘They made me redundant a year ago. They got rid of all the branch managers and now each of the section leaders takes it in turn to work up as manager’.

‘Sign of the times, eh?’

‘I haven’t been able to find a job since other than a temporary one for a few weeks’.

‘I’m really sorry to hear that’ said Mitch.

‘Is Debbie with you?’

‘Debbie?’

‘Yeah, your wife Debbie?’

‘Simon, Debbie and I split up a long time ago’.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that’.

‘It wasn’t long after I met you when you and our Dawn were sharing that house’.

‘And you came to visit her and stayed for a few days’ Simon recalled. ‘I remember’.

‘Dawn told me you’d moved away and she’d lost touch with you which is probably why you don’t know what’s been happening with me’.

‘What?’ asked Simon,
confused. ‘Why did she tell you that I’d moved away? Look, Dawn dropped me when she got married to Adrian years ago. After the third message I left for her wasn’t returned I gave up. I haven’t seen or heard from her in all that time but I didn’t move away. She moved herself away from me if you see what I mean’.

‘Well I do but I don’t know why she’d do that or why she told me you’d moved away’ said Mitch who was as puzzled as Simon was as to why his sister would lie about him. ‘Look, you know the pub up by the cathedral? They do good food there. Why don’t you join me for lunch?’

‘I can’t afford to go out for lunch, Mitch’.

‘Jesus, are things that bad?’

‘Worse’.

‘
Well look, I’ll treat you for old time’s sake’.

‘I can’t let you do that, Mitch’.

‘Of course you can’ Mitch enthused. ‘I want to do it and besides, I’m celebrating’.

‘Celebrating?’

‘Yeah, I’m getting married again’.

Oh for God’s sake, thought Simon. Did he really have to sit through Mitch telling him how it all fell apart with Debbie but he’d got a new girl now who was making him so happy he was going to marry her?

‘Oh’ he said. ‘Congratulations’.

‘Thanks’ said Mitch. ‘I’ve got a couple of things to do first so I’ll see you up at the pub in half an hour?’

‘Great. See you there’.

‘You do want to come to lunch with me, don’t you?’

‘What? Yeah, yeah of course I do’

‘You didn’t look too keen?’

‘Mitch, I’m just going through a hard time at the moment, that’s all’.

‘Well then I accept it as my mission to cheer you up’ said Mitch. ‘After all, I could always put a smile on your face. Remember?’

Simon walked round and round the city centre trying to pluck up the courage to run as fast as he could. Why had Mitch walked back into his life now? 

He finally got to the pub a few minutes late. There was a kind of corridor between the restaurant on one side and the bar on the other. He went into the restaurant and Mitch was sitting at a table in the far corner. He was drinking a pint of bitter and reading the Telegraph. There was a time when Simon would’ve sold his soul to the devil for him. Mitch had been going through difficulties in his marriage to Debbie and they’d decided to spend some time apart which is why he’d come to stay with his sister Dawn. But Mitch had ended up spending a lot more time with Simon than he did with his sister. Simon and Mitch had slotted in with each other as if they’d been friends for years. So much so that other people were noticing and the whispers had started. Simon kept his true feelings to himself, except when he blurted it all out to Dawn and told her that he’d fallen madly for Mitch. 

But then one day Simon got up to find that Mitch had gone. The spare room had been left tidy but empty. It was on the day when Simon and Dawn were throwing a party in their shared rented house. Simon was devastated. He’d so wanted Mitch to be there but he never saw or heard from him again.

‘Ah, you made it’ said Mitch as he looked up and saw Simon. He folded up his newspaper and placed it on the table. ‘What can I get you?’

‘I’ll have a pint too, please’ said Simon. ‘But look, are you sure this is okay? I really don’t have the money to pay my way here’.

‘Simon, relax. I earn a bloody good salary and I’m more than okay financially. So please, let me indulge an old friend who looks like he needs some TLC’.    

Over lunch Simon relaxed and he and Mitch shared the kind of times they always used to. They talked and talked, laughed a lot, and for Simon it was as if the ten years they’d been apart just disappeared. Every now and then a shiver would go down Simon’s spine when he remembered that it was only lunch and they’d soon have to go back to their respective lives. 

‘So’ said Simon. ‘Tell me about your new bride?’

‘His name is Paul’.

Simon almost choked on the wine they’d changed to for accompanying their food. ‘What did you say?’

‘Well you knew that Debbie and I were having problems’ said Mitch. ‘That’s why I was staying with you and our Dawn that time when the two of you were sharing that house. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was gay, Simon. I always had been but I’d never acknowledged it. Then I met you’.

Simon’s mouth had gone dry. ‘Sorry?’

‘I fell in love with you Simon’ Mitch revealed. ‘You made everything about me and my
life make sense for the first time and I wanted so much to tell you’.

Simon felt a surge of blood rush to his head. ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I was going to’ said Mitch. ‘But I asked our Dawn to sound you out and she came back and told me you weren’t interested’.

‘She never asked me anything’ Simon insisted, tearfully. ‘I asked her if you were gay and she told me you were definitely not gay’.

‘Please don’t get upset, Simon’ said Mitch.

‘But your sister deliberately kept us apart and I’m having a really hard time dealing with that. It’s just a bit much after everything else just lately, you know, just a bit much’

Mitch felt awful. ‘I don’t know why she did that’ he said. ‘But I really wish she hadn’t’.

‘I’d never had the kind of feelings for any other man that I had for you’ said Simon. ‘We could’ve been together all these years if Dawn hadn’t lied to both of us’.

‘I know’ said Mitch. ‘And it’s killing me too. It took me months to get over not being able to be with you’.

Simon was on the verge of tears. ‘This is just not fair’.

‘Simon, you made life make sense to me. You made me understand finally just who I was. You gave me the greatest gift. You made me feel complete’.

Simon could feel his heartbreak turning into outright rage. ‘And Dawn did know that the reason you were having problems with Debbie was because you were gay but hadn’t come to terms with it?’

‘She knew it all’ Mitch confirmed. ‘She knew that I left so suddenly because I’d fallen in love with you but, accordingly to her, you didn’t feel the same’.

Simon felt his throat constrict. ‘This is really breaking my fucking heart’.

‘I had to get away’ Mitch confessed. He was almost crying himself now. ‘I couldn’t be with you anymore if you didn’t want me the way I wanted you’.

Simon wanted to scream with frustration at what had been taken away from him. ‘But I did, Mitch, I did want you in the same way and I’ve never stopped wanting you. Jesus fucking Christ! Why was your sister so fucking nasty?’

‘I’ve got no idea’ said Mitch who was feeling pretty raw. He loved his intended Paul but Simon was a candle in his heart that would never go out. ‘Why didn’t you just make a move on me?’