Les Noyades

4: Frost at Midnight

Rumi sat the next three nights at home, the large part of by in the window facing onto the street. Declan, sleepless as he was, worked away the evenings and parts of the early morning in the kitchen. The pair had a small unspoken agreement that Rumi owned the back rooms when he chose to stay at home for the later hours.

He watched out for specifics; a slide of blue, a blond head, a tall and broad frame where he could see it. All these young men spilling spirited from the Colleges and returning unruly roughed-ups with their arms about each other's shoulders and occasionally hands at one another's throats. The girls came too, all flouting their flares and little sailor skirts. Both sexes flocked together and apart as if small and uncertain magnetic forces were attracting and repelling them by each minute. Had Rumi known more about the graces of socialising he might have understood these oscillations– instead he observed with the bemused fascination of a scientist discovering the mechanisms of an ant colony.

It was around the third stroke past midnight that the bells rolled out when he saw a couple emerging from the side alley opposite Doha's window. In the dark they could have been anybody– the streetlamps hardly illuminated the ground over which they stood. They were roughly the same height. The one of them was leaning against the other and audibly singing drunkenly. It was a tune Rumi recognised, but not one that he could place; not that he even mildly considered it when he was so astounded by the nature of this couple's proximity.

Both male students, he could be sure– the height and the voices spoke for that. Halfway down the street they stopped for one to lean the other against a wall and Rumi placed his elbows against the windowsill to lean further forwards to watch the blurrings of heads slowly meeting. His lips parted and tongue slowly rolled out to meet his lower lip and pull it into his mouth as arms and consequently legs entangled. It felt intrusive to be watching them, but what was the harm? They were in the middle of the street and he was hardly one to tell tales. But god, to have that... After all that Culshawe had told him of how 'noble' it was, it might be nice, he thought, to find some love somewhere. Somebody to entangle with in a dark street whilst being enviously watched.

"Rumi," Declan said from behind him.

Rumi flinched and flung himself back reflexively from the window, using his body to disguise what he feared his father might recognise beyond the frame, and surreptitiously crossed his legs over to save from embarrassment.

"I was– I saw Yves earlier. Do you remember him? He came to talk to me the other night about those essays."

Rumi waited what felt an appropriate amount of time before nodding hesitantly. He feared what his father would say.

"He mentioned he was at Professor Culshawe's a few nights ago."

Rumi gulped. "So he was."

"It's about this thesis of his and those papers we need to uncover... Culshawe reckons he knows the chap wrote them and where he lives now. Went to a conference with him once."

"Oh."

"Yves needs them, I don't think he can get away with his thesis without direct quotes from them in the end."

"So he'll go and get them?"

"Yes. Well, you see the man lives quite far away."

"Far? What sort of far?"

"North Scotland sort of far."

"Oh. Far, then."

"And I'd like to go with him. Catch up with my old student, and all."

Rumi nodded and found that he could relax now that he was saved from the terror of his father understand something of his visits to Culshawe's library; whilst he was not ashamed of himself, he knew that it was wrong and he knew that he could never tell the world. He could not even say it to Culshawe– he knew what Culshawe assumed, and he had never denied any of it. He never denied anything but refused to speak of it. The thought of this– and talk of Yves– had him returning to his jealous thoughts of just moments ago. Perhaps if he were left to himself for a couple of days whilst his father left... Surely Culshawe would provide him with some more of his 'candidates' if he asked, if he could ever get the courage to ask rather than passively receive.

"Will I be home alone for some time, then?" He asked.

"Don't you want to come with us? We'll make a trip out of it, eh?"

"I don't know, I—"

"We've hardly been spending any time together. Come, Rumi. And all the intellectual talk will do you some good, stray thing that you are." 

Rumi could see in Declan's nervous expression of rumpled brows and creased forehead that he found it difficult to express a desire to have his son in on this venture with him. He hardly needed to be guilted into it— travelling alongside Yves might be fun, especially as there would be plenty of opportunities to watch him from the corner of his eye. 

"Alright, I'll come," he said. "When'll we leave?"

"Tomorrow afternoon. Yves said he has a friend with a campervan we can borrow, he's gone to get it, which will certainly hold the three of us." 

"Okay. Tomorrow afternoon."

"We'll make it a week's journey. For the fun of it. Pack as heavy as you want, it will all fit in the van!"