Adam: A Sensuous Coming of Age Tale (28 page)

‘
We go round the back and find a way in.’

‘
We can’t do that.’ Adam protested. ‘It’s criminal. Housebreaking. We’d go to prison.’

‘
We’re visitors, not burglars.
Viens
.’

‘
All right.’ Adam tried to find a wavelength that would work. ‘But if visitors find the people they’ve come to see are out they go away again. They go home. They try another time. They don’t force an entry and then wait indefinitely.’

‘
We’ve come so far,’ said Sylvain. ‘They’ll understand.’

Adam
thought this unlikely but could hardly say so. Sylvain knew the people after all, or said he did, and Adam didn’t. Miserably he looked around him, especially upwards. If they did get inside…. But no telephone wires led to this isolated farmstead. Within his range of vision three or four other lonely houses lay scattered upon the heaving sea of vines, but none was nearer than a mile from here or from its nearest neighbour. His parents would be starting supper. Would they? Would they begin without him, could they manage to eat at all when their only son failed to return home and hadn’t made a phone call, had gone missing, was lost? It was an unbearable line of thought. With a great struggle he wrestled it away. Another moment and he’d have been crying again. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s go round the back.’

He moved off slowly, reluctantly following Sylvain.
What else could he do? He thought for a second of leaping into the pick-up and racing off to raise the alarm, to phone his parents and the police from somewhere, abandoning Sylvain until someone came to collect him…It was a mad idea. On the practical level, he barely knew how to drive and had certainly never tried to do it on a public road. He didn’t have a map and couldn’t guess the direction or distance of the nearest village. And more importantly, he still loved Sylvain. However mad he might have gone, he could not just run out on his lover, leaving him to the mercies of the police. Until he thought of something better he would have to stay.

At the back of the house was a small yard with long rambling sheds on two sides of it and a little garden with a lawn running away downhill to vegetable plots on the third.
At the bottom of the slope a thick line of trees presumably concealed a stream. Everywhere else you looked you saw vines. And heard the same unpeopled silence.

They explored the outbuildings, at first with the very practical aim of discovering a hidden back-door key, but soon curiosity overcame them and they found themselves wandering among the machines and equipment that furnished the needs of a kind of farming unfamiliar to
Adam at least. They stepped round a wine-press (hydraulic and hidden by tarpaulins), a grape-picking machine that would bestride the rows of vines like a colossus, found themselves tripping over miles of coiled and hefty plastic pipes. It all looked in good shape as far as one could tell, and was certainly not abandoned here. Equally, given that the
vendange
did not begin before September, it would clearly not be put to use for weeks. Then, remembering what they had come for and giving up on it, they returned keyless to the open air to consider ways of entering the house without one.

Beside the back door they found a shutter that could be unhooked by an exploring finger and, behind it, a small fanlight above a main window which had been shut but not secured.
Adam, who was by a small margin the more slender of the two, climbed onto the windowsill with Sylvain’s help – help which was quite unnecessary but from Sylvain’s point of view impossible to withhold – and stood there for a moment feeling his way inside and down the main window towards the fastening while Sylvain, standing on the ground behind him, massaged his calves. The window sprang open suddenly and Adam almost fell into the dark interior. Sylvain jumped up immediately behind him and followed him through.

Once inside the house, which had once been familiar to him, Sylvain’s self-confidence appeared to return.
He dispelled the darkness by promenading around the ground floor and flinging open windows and the shutters that darkened them, like a character in grand opera. Not that the farmhouse became a temple of light even then. The dark brown and cream paintwork of the interior, old and cracked and foxed with the tar of a generation’s
Gitanes
, and the caramel-coloured curtains saw to that. But at least you could see your way around. Adam only peered into the other rooms from the kitchen where he had landed. They were like the rooms on Sylvain’s farm, heavy with rough chestnut dressers and armoires. No wonder Sylvain looked at home. The kitchen itself was high-ceilinged and austere. Feeding bowls for dogs, all empty, sat on the floor near the sink. A calendar by the door at least indicated the correct year, which was something.

Sylvain returned to
Adam’s side. ‘You’re hungry,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

Adam
had missed that tenderness in his lover’s voice today. Returning, it melted his heart. He would stay here with Sylvain, together against the world, for as long as necessary – whatever the consequences. ‘I need to pee,’ he said.

Sylvain unbolted the back door and they both went back out into the yard where
Adam unzipped with seconds to spare. He hadn’t gone since before leaving school. Sylvain held onto him from behind, lowering his trousers a little way and gently stroking the downy underside of his clenched-up balls until he had finished. He met with no resistance or protest. Then he yanked up the frayed end of his own cut-offs and followed Adam’s example.

Back in the kitchen, Sylvain opened the fridge.
A light came on, so at least the electricity was working. But the fridge was empty except for some stale milk and a little dried-up cheese. Whoever lived here had clearly not just left that morning. Next to the fridge was a chest-freezer and on opening that they struck gold. More precisely: a collection of unidentifiable cuts of meat, a bag of last year’s sweet-corn still on the cob, some blocks of ice-cream and several bags each of wild mushrooms and blackberries. There was a rabbit, curled up in a plastic bag.

‘
That’ll do for us tonight,’ said Sylvain, dislodging the rabbit from its setting of ice-crystals. He seemed suddenly extraordinarily well in control. He placed the rabbit in the sink, bag and all, and started to run the cold tap over it.

‘
It’ll take ages,’ said Adam flatly. Sylvain left the rabbit where it was and opened a cupboard. Rummaging around he found a tin of biscuits and held it out, lid off, to Adam. ‘These’ll keep us going for a bit.’ Adam reached in and drew out a handful. They both ate, then drank glasses of water from the tap. ‘Come upstairs now.’ Sylvain guided him, hand on shoulder, towards a door which opened into an enclosed staircase. They creaked their way up and Adam found himself in a short dark corridor from which several brown doors opened off. Sylvain knew where he was. Without hesitation he pushed open the door of one particular room. ‘This is where we sleep,’ he said, ‘if that’s OK with you. At any rate this is where they’d put us if they were here.’

Adam
doubted this. There was only one single bed in the small, barely furnished room. ‘Is this where you used to sleep before?’ he asked, not really needing the confirming nod that was Sylvain’s answer. ‘I don’t like it in here,’ he said. The shuttered house felt stifling and oppressive.

‘
We only need to come in to sleep. There’s a barbecue in the little garden. We cook and eat outside, you see.’

‘
How long’s that all going to take?’ Adam felt obliged to point up the negative, but he was already beginning to feel better as they descended the stairs.

‘
About an hour to heat the barbecue, but then the rabbit’ll grill in no time.’

‘
How do you know there’s any charcoal?’

‘
I saw a bag in one of the outhouses.’

Adam
found himself envying Sylvain his shorts this hot evening. And especially if they were going to spend it out of doors. He remembered his school bag in the foot-well of the pick-up and that it contained the gym-shorts he wore for
E.P.S.
This led him to a new question for Sylvain. ‘Did you bring anything with you? Clothes? Toothbrush?’

‘
There’s a bag of mine behind the driver’s seat.’

‘
Mine’s there too,’ said Adam. ‘My shorts at least. I’ll get them both.’ He went through the kitchen into the front hall and unlocked the front door from inside with a spare key he found hanging there. There wasn’t much room behind the seats in the pick-up and Adam could only just see Sylvain’s small fishing satchel nestling on the floor. As a fishing bag it did fine but in its new role as luggage or even trousseau it signalled only pathos. He reached through and picked it up, touching something hard and cold that lay underneath it as he did so. He guessed it was a jack or tyre-pump and looked to see. He stopped in mid-movement. He was running his fingers along the double-barrel of a shot-gun. Did Sylvain know it was there? Was it always there, unknown to him, unregarded by anyone else? Or had Sylvain brought it specially? He would ask Sylvain about it. But later. He would not mention it to Sylvain at all. He would think about it and decide whether or not to say anything. Later.

He looked around him again.
The evening sun was streaming across the billowing vine-slopes, the long shadows highlighting the three-dimensional reality of the landscape. The brilliance of the mid-summer greenness made him catch his breath. How could it be so beautiful here, where he was … what? A prisoner? A kidnap victim? A conspirator, a willing party to his own abduction? Again he thought about driving off in the pick-up, or setting out on foot for one of the distant, isolated farms. Again he realised that he wouldn’t. If only he had forked out for a mobile phone like most of the other people at school. He could have phoned his parents from here, told them he was safe and, roughly, where he was. Then he remembered that the question of how he came to be here and who with would make it an extremely awkward phone-call. He would need to think about it carefully, plan what he was going to say. Perhaps Sylvain would run him to a phone-box in the car while the barbecue heated up. Even as he thought this he knew it was a non-starter. Whatever Sylvain’s plans might be, letting Adam phone his parents tonight was certainly not going to be one of them. His parents would have phoned the police by now, he guessed. He told himself that the police would be very professional and reassuring and that his parents would be less anxious on his behalf as a result. Perhaps it actually wouldn’t help anyone if he contacted Hugh and Jennifer or the police this evening. It might simply make things worse for Sylvain when they eventually caught up with him … with them. He decided reluctantly to let the matter go as far as this evening was concerned. Tomorrow he would find a way to persuade Sylvain to drive him home and then all would be well, no harm done.

He went back into the house and through the kitchen, empty apart from the rabbit which still lay under the running cold tap in the sink, and straight out again at the back.
At the edge of the lawn the barbecue had been lit and was beginning to smoke and flare. Of Sylvain there was no sign. He stood for a moment in the warm sunshine, then changed into his gym-shorts where he stood, stowing his discarded briefs and trousers in his backpack.

There were garden seats and Adam sprawled in one, feeling suddenly free.
He gazed down at his bare legs with approval. Sylvain had been right: his muscles were developing attractively. The light crop of blond fuzz that was burgeoning on his shins and calves caught the sun and sparkled teasingly. Where was Sylvain? Suddenly he felt wretchedly guilty for enjoying the moment so. How silly and selfish he had been, telling himself his parents would feel fine once the police had got involved. Of course they wouldn’t. They would be ill with worry, sick with fear. At least
he
knew where he was, that he was safe – for now at least – but they had no such comfort. He tried to imagine what they would be doing right now but could not. He thought about Sylvain’s family; they must be worried too. But he had even less success at imagining their state of mind than in the case of his own parents. Yet there was nothing he could do. Not tonight. And it was hardly his fault that he was here….

Sylvain appeared from the kitchen door, lithe and tanned in his denim cut-offs, a snowy
T-shirt and nothing else, not even shoes. He was carrying two glasses of red wine.

Adam sat up in his chair.
‘Where did you…?’

‘
There’s wine in the cellar. Masses of it.’

‘
We shouldn’t …’ Adam’s conscience spoke.

‘
They make the stuff. It doesn’t cost. And we’re not going to drink all of it,
P’tit-Loup
. I won’t let you go mad.’ He sounded comfortable with his role as Adam’s guardian. Responsibility was new to him and he was enjoying trying it out. His comforting words worked on Adam at any rate; he smiled and reached out for the glass that Sylvain handed to him.

They drank their wine in near silence, admiring the play of sunlight on their own and each other’s bodies, awed by the new experience of being alone together in beautiful surroundings that were their own and would remain so for the rest of the oncoming night.

Sylvain went inside to prepare the rabbit for the barbecue, now a mature furnace of embers, glowing dim and hot. He sent Adam on a search of the vegetable garden after thyme or other herbs, plus anything else that took his fancy and would grill in minutes. Adam did find thyme, plenty of it, and shallots as well. He took them into the kitchen and laid them proudly on the table in front of Sylvain. His lover (or captor, Adam’s view of Sylvain oscillated from minute to minute) had split the rabbit lengthways with a meat cleaver and was rubbing it with salt and olive oil. He received the thyme with great delight and immediately chopped it up and spread all over the glistening meat. He gave it to Adam to carry outside on its chopping board, while he followed on with two refilled glasses of wine.