Live to Tell (4 page)

We walked from West Kensington underground station and despite Joe’s devastating news, I felt like skipping. His arm around my shoulders kept me grounded, so I made do with holding tightly onto his waist. Tonight, the late summer evening was warm and I was wearing the same pale green skirt that I wore the day we met. I had just a camisole and a short, bronze velvet jacket over it for although lightweight, it was perfectly adequate. This was lucky, because going to a school where uniforms were worn, my wardrobe was woefully thin.

The house we reached was a large detached Edwardian villa. It had a short flight of steps leading up to the portico, which looked as if it was carved from Portland stone. Joe unlocked the front door and pointed me in the direction of a broad staircase. He chased me up the stairs as far as the next floor, grabbing at my hips as we went. Laughing, we caught hold of each other on the landing.

“Here it is,” he said and unlocked one of the doors.

It was dark in the room, which seemed to face the back of the house, but Joe strode forward confidently and turned on a lamp. The interior appeared not to have been decorated since it was built. The original cornices and the coving around the fireplace were still intact, and had an air of faded grandeur. Living on a post-war housing estate, I was amazed how big it was with large windows reaching from floor to ceiling protected by shabby wooden shutters.

He closed the door behind us and started to unbutton my velvet jacket carefully lifting it away from my shoulders. “At last,” he said. “I want to be able to really look at you, so that I can picture you when I’m away.” He stared at me and frowned. “Turn around—slowly. That’s right.”

“Oh, gosh. I… er, I don’t know what to say.”

“I do. You’re lovely. Come here.”

At his words I crumbled. He pulled me to him and a moment later, as my arms clung around his neck and my legs circled his waist, he discovered that I really did wear thongs.

During the next few hours he taught me about love, and I realised as the night drifted on, that my enlightenment was due much more to his experience and imagination, than to my own.

“
Ti
amo,Cara
” he whispered and I needed no translation.

On waking, I saw a grey misty light coming through windows that had no curtains. Blinking, I got up and went to look out at the dawn. Joe had not bothered to close the shutters and I could see why. Tall Plane trees encircled the garden outside. In the early-morning sooty rain, their leaves dripped with water and no one could see past them at all. The world was silent and still. Behind me, Joe stirred and sat up, his tousled hair falling over his eyes.

“Come back to bed with me,” he said holding out his hand. I obeyed and we began to kiss again.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I cried when we finally lay still.

“I don’t want to go. I’ve got no choice, but when I come back we’ll see each other again, I promise. I’ll be twenty soon, yet Dad treats me like I’m some juvenile. He’s always banging on about responsibility. Really ticks me off. If there were a war, I’d have to go, not him.”

In response, I slowly traced a pattern through the curly black hair that graced most of his chest. I had never before had the luxury of staying in this way with a man and seeing him naked. I found his body fascinating. Having just gained this pleasure for the first time, it was so unfair that it was now to be denied me. I kissed the muscles on his arm and gently bit his shoulder. He started to kiss me again.

We left the house at ten thirty. The rain had stopped but autumn leaves that had already fallen, blocked the wet gutters and caused rivulets to form, gushing dusty water along the road. Once more we walked together arms linked, to the station and I realised that all the houses in the street were like the one we had just left.

“This is a beautiful road. I didn’t appreciate it last night in the dark.”

“Yeah. That is the sort of house that I want one day. My family moved into a brand new house, a year ago and although it’s large and cost my dad a bomb, it doesn’t feel spacious like these old ones. Still, I suppose I’m lucky they didn’t just move house without telling me and leave me behind. Imagine, getting home from school and finding all your furniture gone and just a goodbye note.” He laughed dryly. “You know,” he continued, “when my dad told me I was going to Cape Town and I said I didn’t want to go, he swore at me, and hit me. I’m nineteen and he hit me on the side of the head. If I’d hit him back, I’d have probably knocked him out.”

He threw up his hands, in a very Italian way.

“Would you like to go for breakfast,” he said. “There’s a little cafe near the station and I could do with something. Have I told you last night was wonderful, by the way?”

I thought last night was wonderful too, but other than sympathise, I didn’t know what else to say. I had battles of my own to fight. Being here with Joe I proved to myself I wasn’t just some immature teenager. I knew my parents were over-protective and determined to keep me close but I felt I could take on the world. Feeling heartbroken at our impending parting, I was sure would help me find inner reserves to confront my family. Then I would cope with whatever life threw at me.

“I don’t want you to go away, especially not out of the country,” I replied.

He enclosed my fingers with his own. “It won’t be forever. We’ll meet again, I promise.”

The cafe was small and crowded and we sat opposite each other eating scrambled eggs. He held my knees between his and when I looked up I saw he was staring at me.

“What’s the matter,” I asked.

In reply he raised one eyebrow and looked down at his lap.

“Look,” he said.

In unison, we stood up and hastily departed the cafe, our need for one another stronger than for another slice of toast.

Back once more in his room, we fell on each other and tore off our clothes.

CHAPTER TWO
 

I decided not to tell anyone about my date with Joe, a kind of self-preservation, I suppose. It was a small precious memory to keep close to my heart, something I could think about when times were tough. As he had done things to me I’d never known before, things were well worth thinking about. Aunt Jess enquired if I had seen the nice boy I met in Italy but I told her he had gone to South Africa to study and we had no plans to meet in the near future.

Then a miracle happened. I was accepted at the Warwick Avenue School of Art and Design in North West London. I positively glowed with joy and the pain of losing Joe began to fade slowly into the background of my mind.

I felt that college would be very different from school and that I would be facing an austere few years, so I assumed a piety completely alien to me. Nervously, I began to attend my lessons, commuting every morning from my home in Hertfordshire, portfolio in hand. Then I realised that life in college was a bowl of cherries compared to the rigidly controlled atmosphere at the school I went to.

They didn’t enforce attendance and the staff seemed more laid back than even I was. However, I tried to discipline myself, helped by Dad, who accompanied me on the morning part of the commute, en-route to his own work, in central London. The problems occurred later in the day when homebound trains were already full by the time they reached the station that I used at West Hampstead, and sometimes trains were cancelled all together. I got home wearier and wearier and felt something had to give. It would probably be me.

The college had a student notice board and I thought the solution to my problem might be to place an advert there, looking for digs. I didn’t feel I had much in common with the other girls in my group and thought I’d stand a better chance on my own with a total stranger.

I made my way to the corridor where the notices were displayed and as I stood there reading them, a slightly built, dark haired young man came and stood beside me. He anxiously read them, too.

“Are you looking for somewhere to rent, as well,” I asked.

“No, I’ve got an apartment just up the road, but I can’t afford to live in it alone. I had a sharer but he left at the end of last term and now things are getting desperate.”

“Oh, that’s rough,” I sympathised. “But, I’m sure you’ll soon find someone. There seems to be a shortage of reasonable places.”

I scanned the other ads but nothing seemed suitable for me, and I realised that I would have to compose my own message. “Oh, well, good luck,” I said, and feeling a bit despondent, turned to walk away. Before putting pen to paper, I thought, I’ll get the
London
Evening
Standard
. There might be a better choice of adverts there, more what I’m looking for.

“Hi, wait. Don’t go. What about you? Would you be interested? In sharing, I mean.”

He looked a bit like a lost puppy and my heart went out to him. Taking the recently vacated room would be the obvious solution to both our needs, but I hesitated.

“Well, er, I don’t know. I’d love to but I’m not sure. I was thinking about sharing with another girl. I’m not sure my family would approve of me sharing with a man. They’re a bit, well, unreconstructed, if that’s the right word. You know, a bit old-fashioned.”

He smiled at that. “Well, they wouldn’t have any worries about me.” He had a gentle Southern Irish brogue and seemed genuinely concerned about me. “That’s why it’s difficult for me to find anyone to share with. When they meet me, most other men don’t want to, and the ones that do, terrify me.” He shrugged his shoulders. “So…”

“Oh, I see,” I said, thinking I knew what he was talking about, but not sure what to add to the conversation that would not sound either rude or gauche.

“I guess that must make things more awkward for you,” I said. “Well, if you could give me a day or two to put it to my mum and dad? It’s going to be difficult even persuading them I need to move at all. The whole ‘man thing’ will make it an even harder sell.”

My family, I knew, would view a gay man in my life just as bad a housemate as a heterosexual one. I had to think of a way to sugar the pill.

“Thanks, for that. Trying and all. Sharing with a girl would be brilliant. My name’s Aidan, by the way. I’m from Cork, in Eire.”

I nodded and smiled.

“I’m in my third year, studying package design. Say, would you like to see the place? It’s only a short walk from here. I could take you there tonight, after my last lecture, if you like. It’s on the main road in Maida Vale, you know, a continuation of Edgware Road. I’m lucky there, in that I get it really cheap, much cheaper than it’s worth. That’s ’cos I’m a sub-tenant of an old guy, who’s lived there for over forty years. He’s got a protected tenancy.”

He must have noticed my anxious look for he added, “Don’t worry. He doesn’t live there anymore. He moved in with his daughter in Cricklewood, when it got too much for him to look after. It’s in a beautiful Art Deco building, almost worth being there for the architecture alone. That’s my passion, thirties architecture. That and old films. I’m mad about films made in the thirties and forties. They are the only vices I’ve got. You know, Ginger Rogers, Humphrey Bogart, that sort of thing. What about you?”

“I’m in my first year here studying general art and design, although I want to major in fashion. And I don’t think I have any vices, don’t smoke, er do drink a bit. You’re not teetotal are you?”

“No,” he said chuckling. “Very definitely not. Oh, I really do hope you like the place; I’m sure we’d get on fine.”

I grinned at him. I was sure, too.