Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (18 page)

A moment or two later the telephone rang, which startled everybody, cruelly breaking the mood of the evening.
Hugh went out to the kitchen to answer it. ‘It’s for you,’ he announced to his son. ‘From England. It’s … um … Michael.’

NINE

Adam
rocketed out of his chair and into the kitchen. He picked up the phone and heard Michael say without preamble: ‘ It’s half-term in a few weeks. We’ve got a whole week. Could we come and stay for a few days?’

‘
We?’

‘
Me and Sean,’ said Michael matter-of-factly. ‘Or should that be Sean and I? There’s cheap ferry and coach tickets on offer.’

‘
I suppose so.’ His mind was a flurry of questions and half-perceived complications. Sean and Michael together? Whatever had happened? Michael whom he’d had sex with, shared secrets with, and Sean who made love to him only in dreams. Could they conceivably have become an item in Adam’s absence? The thought made the blood rush to his head. ‘I’ll have to check with Mum,’ he said and then used the necessity to go and consult her as an opportunity to catch his breath. Returning to the phone a moment later he said that it would be fine and added as an afterthought that he was really pleased about the idea. They talked dates and bus times for a minute or two, then Adam remembered something. ‘I posted you a letter a few days ago. You won’t have got it yet.’

‘
Au contraire
,’ said Michael, ‘ I got it this morning. And I still think you’re mad. Even madder than ever.’

‘
Oh well, then, yes,’ said Adam. ‘You’ve realised. So I may as well tell you that I’m now a pirate captain.’

Adam fell into step with the new rhythm of his days. There was school, the bus home, the dive down from the bus-stop into the
vallon
to be met by Sylvain, lovemaking of one kind or another in their old secret place on the grassy spur where the cliffs fell away on three sides, the trek back home where he would arrive looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, then cello practice, family dinner, school homework and bed. Things were made easier by the putting back of dinner time by half an hour or so since Gary’s arrival, perhaps by unspoken agreement between Gary and Hugh (who did not have so very much in common) to shorten the social conversational part of the evening that lay like a slightly awkward piece of terrain to be traversed between the end of the meal and bedtime. This gave Adam a little more time with Sylvain each day and made the lateness of his arrival home less noticeable than would otherwise have been the case.

Saturday saw a slight change to the schedule.
Adam arrived home from school in time for lunch and then made his excuses and went to meet Sylvain in the early afternoon. But they could not make too long an afternoon of it; Sylvain was wanted back on the farm to help castrate some bull calves and so Adam found himself back home at about four o’clock. There Gary was sitting in the garden, at a table covered with sheets of manuscript paper which he had weighted down with two half-bricks. The tactic was only partly successful and the breeze was picking up the corners teasingly and making the pages difficult to write on.

‘
I’ve had enough of this,’ said Gary when he saw Adam. ‘I’m off for a stroll. Care to join me?’

Adam
accepted Gary’s invitation. Gary was not to know what Adam had just been up to and that his middle-aged companionship would therefore be exposed to cruelly close comparison with the recent sensual, sexual proximity of Sylvain. Gary put on a jacket over his shirt, Adam, very deliberately, did not. They turned left. ‘Towards Noidant?’ said Gary.

‘
Why not?’ Adam was quite willing to go where Gary wanted. Having had sex within the last hour he was anybody’s friend.

‘
Are you planning to be a professional?’ Gary asked once they had gone a little way along the road.

‘
Professional what?’ asked Adam, startled.

Gary
guffawed. ‘Professional cellist. What on earth did you think I meant?’

‘
Yes, I suppose so. I’m going to go to music college anyway. At least, if they’ll have me.’

‘
I don’t think there’ll be much doubt about that,’ said Gary seriously. ‘Not if you continue to play the way you did with me on Wednesday.’

Adam
heard the words and could barely believe them. Above them a red kite rode high on the wind. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’

‘
Of course,’ Gary went on, ‘you are a man in love.’

Adam
literally stopped in his tracks. His left foot which he was about to lift and place in front of the right one refused to budge. Gary had to stop too. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘
I’m not really very clever. It’s not one of the privileges of age to know what young people are thinking. But I heard it in your playing. As clear as day. So I’m sorry if it’s a great big secret but if you want to keep it that way you’ll have to give up music I’m afraid. Don’t tell me you’ve played like that from the beginning.’

‘
You’re only guessing,’ said Adam sulkily. ‘You can’t possibly read all that into the way someone plays a cello.’

‘
Really?’ said Gary archly. ‘But I’m truly sorry if I’m wrong, and even more sorry if I’m right and I’ve upset you by bringing the subject up. It was very insensitive of me. We’ll talk about something else. Tell me, what’s your opinion of Schubert?’

‘
No.’ Adam put one foot in front of the other. ‘I don’t want to talk about Schubert. You’re quite right, of course. I am in love. And for the first time. You can laugh if you want to.’ Gary did not. ‘Well, one and a half times, I suppose.’

‘
Whatever does that mean?’ Gary did laugh now, not unsympathetically.

‘
It means, I suppose, only once with someone who loves me in return.’

‘
And once with somebody who doesn’t?’

‘
Does that make sense?’

‘
Perfect sense. Am I allowed to ask their names?’

Adam
frowned. Their road was winding down towards Noidant. Soon they would pass the tree-trunk where the wheatear bobbed and whistled.

‘
I shan’t mind if you don’t want to tell me. It’s only a standard question in this kind of conversation, a cliché if you like, like talking about the weather.’

‘You think,
girls’ names, don’t you?’ said Adam through tight lips. ‘You might get a shock.’

‘
If they were boys’ names, you mean? I don’t think so.’

‘
Well, they’re both boys, so there,’ said Adam in the defiant, petulant voice of a small child. ‘One happens to be in England, the other’s in France. I won’t tell you their names. You might meet them.’

‘
Wednesday night’s telephone call?’ Adam was silent. ‘Sorry,’ said Gary. ‘No business of mine.’

But
Adam was somehow flattered by Gary’s curiosity, and played, flirted with it almost, like a fish nosing at an angler’s bait.

‘
You could be right,’ he said. ‘ But that would only be the half-a-one. The other’s right here in France. He lives just a mile away.’

Gary
’s eyebrows rose in spite of himself but Adam could not stop himself now. ‘He’s beautiful,’ he said aggressively. ‘Handsome and … strong. Natural. A man of nature … I mean a boy …’

After a moment’s doubt, for he was afraid the gesture would make
Adam either angry or tearful, Gary put a hand very lightly on Adam’s shoulder. ‘Relax. You don’t have to say any more. I’m not judging you, or him. And I’m not asking any more questions. I shouldn’t have begun this conversation.’

‘
Have you ever been in love with more than one person at the same time?’

‘
Yes, as a matter of fact,’ said Gary, glad that he had steered the conversation past the dangerous shoals its course had led it to. ‘It’s not an unusual situation to be in. Especially when you’re young. And if you really want to know, I think you should enjoy the experience as much as you can. Maybe that’s dangerous advice to give a teenager, and very immoral. But though you may fall in love a few more times in your life, those times won’t be
that
many.’

‘
Why do you say that?’ asked Adam, startled into taking an interest once again in someone other than himself.

Gary
broke his stride for an instant. In the pasture below them the wheatear called. ‘ The voice of experience, that’s all. And there’s no reason at all why you should take any notice of it. In fact, come to think of it, I’d like you to forget I ever said it.’

‘
You’re younger than my mother, aren’t you?’ said Adam slowly as if carefully assembling a complicated piece of forensic evidence.

‘
Yes. I went to the Academy when I was fourteen. She was already nineteen or twenty, like most of the others. She was a bit like a mother to me. Only a little bit, mind. She wasn’t that much older.’

‘
You were a child prodigy, then.’

‘
Something like that, yes.’

There was a pause while
Adam wondered whether he dared ask his final question. He did, but in a quiet and halting voice. ‘ Gary? – Are you gay?’

‘
Yes, Adam, I am,’ said Gary slowly. ‘I’m not sure that your father would put up with me around your mother if I wasn’t.’

‘
Does he know, then? Does my mother know?’

‘
Let’s say that they both know and don’t want to know. Will that do?’

‘
But they put up with you around me.’

There was a silence for a moment, broken only by the whistles of the lonely bird, bobbing up and down and flaunting his white back on the dead tree-trunk beyond the fence.

‘Yes, they do, don’t they?’ said Gary, as if surprised by a thought that had not struck him before. ‘Perhaps they think it’s possible to be gay and also a gentleman. What do you think?’

These were the weeks of blue flowers and fields, the weeks that comprised the last part of April and early May. They would be followed, according to Sylvain – whose projected timetable nature had followed punctiliously up to now – by a few more weeks of brilliant yellow-gold before the poppies took over everything in mid-June and brought the colour sequence to its glorious end, turning the landscape into a sea as scarlet as arterial blood. Adam did not want to think so far ahead. Some time after the end of June would come the end of term and his return to England. And that meant … His mind balked at the thought. It was still a long way off and anything might happen before then. He sailed on a broad untroubled sea, clear to the horizon. There was no sign now of the precipice beyond, no sound as yet of the roaring of the waters as they crashed fuming into the abyss that lay beyond the edge of his world.

There was something more immediate to deal with though.
Half-term and the impending arrival of Michael and Sean. Of course Adam was delighted that his old friend Michael was coming, though he welcomed the news of Sean’s turning up with him with more complex emotions. He was surprised, even flattered that Sean should want to come, but also a little alarmed. He couldn’t guess at his reasons or at what his relationship with Michael now was; these things would not become apparent until they both got here. But there was the problem of Sylvain. Michael knew of Sylvain’s existence. At a pinch Adam thought he could cope with a meeting between the two of them, provided it could be well stage-managed. But that would only be feasible if Michael were coming alone. A social gathering that included Michael, Sylvain and Sean was out of the question. So far as Adam knew, Sean didn’t know that he was gay. Adam himself hadn’t been certain the last time they had seen each other, after all. He might be shocked, would certainly be baffled, to find Adam having an affair with a full-grown farm lad. He might accidentally blurt something out to Adam’s parents or, if he met them, his French school-friends. The risks were too great. Adam would have to find a way to keep his different lives apart for the duration of this testing time. One thing was certain, though. He would not be having sex with Michael. Quite apart from the presence of Sean in the house, severely limiting the practical opportunities as well as disorienting Adam’s emotional compass, the simple fact was that he was Sylvain’s lover now and that was that.

Adam
continued to meet Sylvain daily after school; they made love in the sunshine with total abandon as if without a care in the world. By some miracle nobody caught them out. Gary could guess, of course, what kept Adam occupied after school, but he didn’t know who or exactly where, and he never asked. He and Adam occasionally went for walks together, once even drinking a beer together under the Martini sunshade at Noidant, but their conversations remained tethered to safe, although usually interesting, subjects and did not stray again towards matters of relationships and sex. They talked about musical form: Adam said he couldn’t see the point of fugues; they were like nothing in nature, he said. Gary said he would see what he could do to make him change his mind. They talked about musical child prodigies. Gary had been one – ‘ Well, half a one,’ he qualified. Adam said that he knew
he
wasn’t one. ‘ You’re very lucky,’ Gary said. ‘ To not be one and to know that you’re not one is the best possible combination.’ Adam’s face had fallen slightly. ‘ That doesn’t mean, though,’ Gary added, ‘ that you’re not rather highly talented,’ and was rewarded with the sight of Adam’s face brightening as if the sun had come out over the landscape. Sometimes Gary would indulge Adam by playing the piano parts of his cello pieces, and once or twice, just for fun, Gary would take them through a Mozart piano trio, playing as much of the violin part as his hands could manage in addition to his own piano part and humming the rest, while Adam sight-read the rather minimal contributions that Mozart had written for the bass instrument.