Les Noyades

8: Songs of Innocence and Experience

They awoke all of them almost frozen in place by the harsh Scottish weather brought into their van by the faulty back door that would not seal. Declan had generously heaped his own blanket onto his son, and since Yves had woken up before any of them, he had left them his own. Rumi wrapped a thick woollen throw around himself and unfastened the back door to slip out into the overcast morning haze.

Yves was perched on the wall next to which they had parked, drinking from a metal thermoflask and rubbing his neck.

"Get good sleep?" he asked when he saw Rumi.

Rumi nodded, as had become his go-to reply.

"I slept wrong on my neck and now it hurts like hell... Here, you want some coffee?" He held out the flask and, despite being categorically averse to the stuff, Rumi accepted the offer. Anything to warm himself up.

He pressed his lips to the rim and realised suddenly that here, where his own mouth was touching, had been Yves' mouth moments ago. The coldness of the metal had affronted Yves' nerves just as they did his own, and the coffee that he swilled into his mouth had possibly even touched those lips of which he had been previously fantasising. He handed back the flask with a wavering hand and their fingers brushed infinitesimally as he did.

"I think your father's gone back to sleep," Yves remarked in good humour. "Come sit next to me."

He held out a hand to help Rumi pull himself up onto the wall, and Rumi even thought he detected a reluctance to let go. Wistful thinking, of course; Yves had no intentions toward him, neither did he particularly have any towards Yves. He was content in his imaginations alone. Anything further might cause him an attack of nerves given how affected he had been by the mere daydreams he had steeped himself in during the drive to Scotland.

"I thought you'd ask me more questions about what I said yesterday," Yves told him openly. "I haven't told anybody before. Except for my aunt."

"Your aunt knows?"

"She knows Culshawe very well. I told her I was down on money and she suggested I pay him a visit."

"Oh."

"You don't have any questions, then?"

"I—" Rumi could think of nothing to ask. There were a million questions he had but no words would pin them down into speakable sentences. "I don't..."

"I'll tell you anything." There was almost something of desperation in Yves' tone. "For example, I can tell you that he pays me by the hour, and that he likes the Romantics, and that I visit him three days a week."

"I really don't know what to—"

"What else is there? Oh, I let him touch anywhere above my waist but nowhere below, but sometimes he pays extra and I drop the rule."

Rumi's discomfort was growing exponentially. He had wanted to know all of this but he had never wanted to hear it, nor had he ever wanted Yves to be so direct— it terrified him, and suddenly there was no pleasure in the depraved thoughts that Yves had thrust into his imaginings by bringing this up. It turned his stomach to conceive of his elderly and sedate friend, the intellectual, with his hands that turned the pages of the books Rumi read placed instead around the lithe body of the boy he had brought to the library as a 'treat' of some sorts. Culshawe had implicitly suggested that Rumi follow after Yves— that they share in the body of one, as if partaking in some debased and lustful form of communion. Surely both events could occur on their knees.

"I didn't expect you to be so surprised," Yves continued with disregard for Rumi's pained expression. "I assumed that he was hiring you for the same purpose that night. You obviously don't have much money at home and— oh, what's wrong?"

Rumi had jumped down from the wall and was opening the front door of the van to climb in. He felt physically sick from the idea that Yves had put in his head, that of Culshawe hiring him out and touching him and handing over filthy, stained money to Declan. He moved to lock the door but did not get even close to the mechanism before Yves was getting in from the other side. Rumi looked back to see that his father was, by good chance, still sleeping the sleep of the dead.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Rumi."

He kept silent. He had no answer to this; what could he say in reply?

"I only thought that since you're so shy you would want to know the answers without the having to ask."

"I would have asked if I wanted to know," he said quietly, afraid suddenly of causing his own offence. "Professor Culshawe is a family friend."

"Yes, I know that. He told me when I asked. He laughed when I told him what I thought you were doing in his house— he says you're completely sexless, that he can't get you to take interest in anyone."

Rumi went crimson and once more tried to escape by throwing himself out the door— and again he was prevented, this time by Yves' hand closing in around his shoulder. He withered beneath the touch and fought to find it offensive rather than frustratingly welcome. He could not understand why Yves had trapped him so, nor why he demanded to discuss such profligate matter in such degenerate detail.

"It's not true, is it?" Yves pressed with a voice that had become all at once gentle and soothing. "I don't think you're one bit sexless. In fact, I think you're the very opposite— I think you disappeared in the pub yesterday to touch yourself, didn't you?"

"Stop, I don't want to—"

"Were you thinking about me?"

"Yves, please stop," Rumi pleaded, but Yves was grinning like a cat now, his fingers tightening around his arm and his other hand reaching out to grip Rumi's wrist. "Let go, I—"

"Did you whisper my name? Did you come thinking that I was touching you before you sat beside me and pretended nothing had happened?"

Rumi screwed his eyes shut as Yves' hands moved to softly cup his face. He heard movement could tell how close they suddenly were by the warmth of Yves' breath against his cheek. It smelled of coffee.

"Open your hands if you want to be held," Yves quoted quietly. "Do you want me to hold you?"

Rumi could not pretend any longer. He searched for Yves' lips with his own and yet found only dull space. His eyes burst open to see that Yves had sat back against the seat and was holding the steering wheel with a faux cheer that alarmed him until he turned to see that his father was slowly sitting up.

"Good morning, Declan," Yves chirped with a wide smile. "Sleep well?"

"Not so much well, but I slept a lot."

"Quantity over quality sometimes works."

Rumi glanced into his father's eyes and saw that no suspicion rested there; he was safe, but at what cost? His heart was thrumming a fervent pattern against his ribs and his entire body was seized by an electric sensation that threatened to explode upon him and send him into shivers of sensation. It came upon him that he had very nearly— that Yves had wanted to touch him, that he had held him there with the long fingers that were wrapped now around the gearbox.

"Rumi wanted to sit in the front for the last stretch of the journey," Yves lied as he started the van up. "I hope that's alright."

"Of course. I'm glad to be back here with all these blankets to keep warm."

"I'll turn on the heating."

Yves dropped one hand from the steering wheel to turn the dial for the heating, but then did not return it to the wheel— it went instead to idle upon Rumi's knee. Rumi looked up at him, aghast at the movement when his father was awake and only just behind them. He turned away sharply and Yves' hand was knocked from his leg. The loss of contact made him feel cold, but there was relief mixed in there; he was terrified of everything that had just transpired. However educated he was about shame by Culshawe he could not keep it from rearing up its ugly head in the presence of his father, whose reaction he most feared— even being imprisoned would not shame him as much as seeing his father brushed with his scandal. Culshawe said that it would soon be legalised, but what if he was caught before it was? And what if he was caught after it was? There seemed hardly any difference between the two; he was more afraid of people knowing than facing any punishment. He decided that, if at all possible, he would have nothing more to do with the desire he felt for Yves. It would bring him nothing but pain.