Gilliflowers (33 page)

Crosses fingers and chants:
I do believe in fairies, I do, I DO
. Nothing! Tinker Bell stayed dead.

Shane handed the wine list back to the waiter with a smile and a request for a bottle of sparkling mineral water. Now call me fucking awkward, but sparkling mineral water is no substitute for champagne.

I looked at Shane with a clear question in my eyes. He gazed straight back with a clear answer in his. No. There was another message in his eyes, a warning not to argue.

I obeyed. I didn’t say a word, but I’m ashamed to say I spoiled the evening all the same. I fell into a mood of sullen unresponsiveness. There I was in a truly beautiful hotel in a stunning location with divine food and all I could do was obsess over not having a glass of wine. I have no idea why. I suppose it was a case of IEM being in charge of the bus again, and wrecking it. Thank God we don’t need a licence to live in the same way we need a licence to drive. I’d never get insurance.

By personal choice I opted out of shared activity and spent much of the weekend incarcerated in my hotel bedroom curled on the couch reading Raymond Chandler novels that I found on the bedroom bookshelf.

Dick and Shane ignored me and got on with enjoying the facilities both inside and outside the hotel.

My allotted bedroom was comfortable and attractive. It had antique furniture, a stunning view of the verdant fells and a hotline to room service, so my self-imposed exile was a fairly pleasant one.

When we got home on Sunday afternoon I was all ready to let bygones be bygones, but Shane had other ideas. He got to business the moment we stepped indoors, saying he’d warned me that should I raise the alcohol issue again he would discipline me. I argued I hadn’t raised it, because I hadn’t said a word. He disagreed.

In his view my ‘ungracious surly behaviour’ at the hotel amounted to defiance via a form of passive resistance.

Grasping my arm he opened the study door and thrust me inside, closing the door for a moment to say something to Dick. When the door reopened I protested it was my birthday, hoping for lenience. He said a tart ‘happy birthday’ before stripping down my shorts and pants and putting me over his knee.

He issued a statement. “When I say no to something I mean no, not yes, not maybe, but no! No means no! I said no alcohol and I meant no alcohol and no stropping over it.”

It was the prelude to an intense spanking. I thought it was over when his hand stilled, but it was merely a respite to allow me to get my breath back. I’d been so consumed by what was happening to my hindquarters I hadn’t noticed Dick enter the study. He handed Shane a ping-pong style paddle and left. You can go right off some people.

Six hard strikes later the paddling was over and I was a sad and sorry boy. Shane sent me to bed with a stern warning. If he had to repeat himself on the subject again he’d use a cane to highlight it.

I was miserable for days afterwards, not so much because of the paddling, but because I regretted my stupid behaviour and wished I could undo it all. If this were one of Leo’s cookbooks there’d be an underlined note here saying ‘never do this again.’ Unfortunately we can’t undo the cock-ups of yesterday, all we can do is look to future days and seek to behave more judiciously.

I’m no more in love with the idea of life as an abstainer, and no closer to accepting it on a deep level. I am not resigned, as some poet once said about death, though granted not being able to have a drink is marginally less serious than death.

I’m going to try and accept the ruling on a surface level, or at least resent it less obviously. Perhaps in time what’s on the surface will permeate beneath and bring the legendary sense of peace as mentioned by Dick.

Dear Diary, I plead guilty to neglecting you again in recent days. My mood has been more geared towards physical activity rather than intellectual activity, if scribbling in this tome can be considered an intellectual pursuit.

I got my way with regard to sinking a pond in the back garden, but I’m beginning to wish Shane had put his foot down and said a categorical no instead of letting me talk him round. Contrary man. He says no when I want him to say yes and vice versa.

The pond project isn’t working out the way I envisaged. The garden looks like a small meteorite has crash-landed in it leaving an unsightly crater. I’m knackered. The men folk haven’t offered any help. In their opinion it’s my baby. I sired it, so it’s up to me to get on with nurturing it into maturity. I’m seriously considering paying a professional to adopt and finish it properly and landscape around it.

The unhelpful ones are allegedly watching Wimbledon at the moment. I can hear the players grunt as balls are slammed. I’m not talking tennis players. The grunts I can hear don’t seem to be emanating from the telly. If sex ever gets put on ration Dick and Shane will go into decline.

It’s almost time to prepare dinner. We’re eating in this evening, but eating out tomorrow. We’re invited over to Rob and Howard’s place for dinner. Rob has just finished decorating their dining room and he wants to christen it. I’m not in the mood for socialising. I’m trying to think of an excuse to get out of it, one that won’t offend Rob and won’t leave me at risk of censure from the boyfriends. Shane has been snippy with me lately, or maybe I’ve been snippy with him, either way I’d best be careful or I’ll end up being disciplined.

Dick is yelling a demand for new balls please. He must have wrung Shane’s out. I suppose I’ll have to don sweatbands and go fulfil my duty as a ball boy. It’s a hard life being at the beck and call of a sex-crazed posh person.

I’m still here, blows the dust off the page. I’ve been too busy to journal. I’ve been seeing a new bloke and you know what it’s like when you start a new relationship, you want to be together all the time. His name is Derek and I met him at a garden centre about two weeks ago. He’s younger than the men I usually go for. He’s twenty-nine with bleached blond hair and a lovely tanned muscular physique. We’ve been in bed together a couple of times. (Lie detector says enough already!) Oh all right, I confess, I’m kidding. I don’t mean bed in the sense your smutty little minds are probably thinking. I’m talking flowerbed rather than bedroom bed.

Derek works at the aforementioned garden centre where I’ve been buying the materials for the pond. Could I hell get that pond right. I kept going in and asking Derek’s advice. In the end he offered to come round one day after work and have a look at my project to see what was going on with it. I jumped at the offer. He came last Friday. He was bloody brilliant. He sussed out where I was going wrong and helped me re-dig and level the area and line it properly. He installed a pump on Monday to operate a little fountain ball feature to keep the water moving and prevent it from stagnating. He’s coming back tomorrow to help me edge the pond with bricks.

It’s looking good.

I have to report the boyfriends are sick of hearing me talk about Derek. Every time I mention his name Dick rolls his eyes and mutters something about Saint Derek of the garden centre. Shane rolls his eyes and mutters something about Derek costing him a fucking fortune, as everything he suggests seems to come with a high price tag and he wouldn’t be surprised if he were on commission.

As it happens he does get commission for sales of bigger items and he’s also getting monetary recompense for the labour he’s doing, but I haven’t mentioned that to Shane. He’ll find out soon enough when he goes over the household accounts.

Derek didn’t ask to be paid for his help. I insisted. You can’t take a man’s labour and not pay him for it. It wouldn’t be right. He’s married with two little kids so he needs all the dosh he can get. See, I’m a socially responsible houseboy I am. You won’t catch me exploiting my fellow workers.

I managed to incur Shane’s wrath last Sunday night. From the way he carried on anyone would think I’d done it on purpose. It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone. He was a bit on the ratty side to begin with. He’d had a heavy week at work and then had to attend a meeting on Saturday. He was looking forward to a day of rest on Sunday, but Penny phoned to bend his ear about their dad playing up again and also moan about James not committing to marriage when he has a child on the way. She wanted Shane to have a word, but he said he wasn’t James’s keeper and refused to interfere. It upset her, prompting a snipe about the lax morals of both her brothers when it came to relationships. Shane told her to give it a rest and let people live the way they wanted to live. She hung up on him. Anyway he ended up with a stress headache and said he was going to have an early night.

While he showered I closed the blinds and turned down the duvet. Being a

thoughtful houseboy I decided to light a lavender tealight in order to help facilitate relaxation. Lavender is supposed to be a stress buster. I put the tealight in a holder and placed it on the bedside table and then went downstairs leaving it to waft its scent.

Fifteen minutes later the Sunday evening calm was shattered by the sound of frenzied bellowing and a smell of burning. Dick and I almost fell over each other as we charged up the stairs. We found Shane, who was starkers, flogging out flames on the duvet with a pillow. Dick quickly got a damp towel and everything was soon brought under control.

Shane, fucking blind man, hadn’t noticed the tealight on the bedside cabinet and had gotten into bed and snuggled under the duvet. He then decided he was too warm and flung the duvet back, whereupon a corner of it caught the tealight and soon burst into flames.

Shane was visibly shaken. So was I. It could have been a serious accident. Instead of saying something appropriately apologetic and soothing my mouth opened and out came: ‘fucking hell, Shane, that must have been one hot wank you had.’ He was not amused and boy did he let this boy know it in harsh verbal terms. The duvet wasn’t the only thing burning, so were my ears. I was lucky it wasn’t my backside as well. I was almost in tears by the time he’d done roasting me.

Dick acted as arbitrator as he so often does. Putting his arms around me he told Shane I’d only been trying to do something sweet and caring and hadn’t intended for the bed to go up in flames. He then gently scolded me for not having the common sense to forewarn Shane there was a naked flame near the bed.

Shane and I apologised to each other and made up with a kiss and a hug.

The duvet and its cover were buggered, fit only for the bin. Fortunately we have spares. I fetched one and Dick helped me put a fresh cover on it and make up the bed again. We then left him to his early night. Once on the landing I looked at Dick and pulled a ‘yikes’ sort of face. Next thing we were clutching at each other snorting with laughter. We got a fright as the bedroom door flung open and a cold voice demanded to know what was funny.

Dick managed to compose himself and claim ‘smoke inhalation, Daddy, it’s

making us cough. We won’t disturb you any further.’ Taking my hand he lead me downstairs and into the lounge where we collapsed on the couch and giggled ourselves silly. It was relief laughter, as well as callous mirth. Poor Shane. The look on his face as he attempted to quench the burning duvet had been legend. If this were a public safety film there’d be a tagline here saying never leave a naked flame near a naked man under a duvet.

Thumbs up for the houseboy! The pond is finished at last and looks fantastic, a delightful garden feature as they say in property blurbs. My pleasure at its successful completion was compromised a little by something that happened afterwards.

Derek duly came round on Thursday and helped me edge the pond, showing me

how to lay and mortar the bricks. He returned yesterday bringing a load of aquatic plants and also some bedding plants and grasses to soften the contours. It was warm so we both stripped to the waist while we worked on putting them in. We were chatting away when I suddenly got a sense of being watched. I looked up to find Dick standing there with his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. I asked what the hell he was doing home so early. He grinned and said there wasn’t much going on at the office so he’d decided to take a half-day to see how the pond was coming along and meet the exalted Derek. He didn’t say it exactly in those words, but it was the gist.

I introduced them to each other and they shook hands and had a few words. Dick thanked him for helping me with the pond and said it looked beautiful. He watched us for a while longer and then went indoors to change out of his work clothes and have a shower.

I felt both happy and sad when the planting was complete and I paid Derek final monies owed and thanked him for all his input. It had been fun working with him and talking to him. He’s a working class lad with a similar council house upbringing so we had common ground. He slapped me on the shoulder and said no problem he’d enjoyed it. He then invited me to go to the pub with him for a pint to celebrate completion of the project. I couldn’t. Dick and Shane wouldn’t be too pleased if I waltzed off leaving them without dinner, so I regretfully explained my working day wasn’t yet over.

He looked disappointed. Giving a shrug he said ‘maybe another time then’ adding he was working Saturday and Sunday, but if I had a mind I could give him a bell at the garden centre and we could meet one night after work. He was free most Thursdays when his wife took the kids to visit her sister. We shook hands and he left.

As I prepared the evening meal I thought things over. I would have loved to go to the pub with Derek for a pint. There’s nothing nicer than sitting in a sunny beer garden knowing you’ve earned the cold pint of lager or beer you’re supping. There was a possibility of friendship in the situation if I chose to pursue it, but I knew I wouldn’t. Like me Derek came from a background where socialising meant having a few pints with your mates and being one of the crowd. He’d expect the camaraderie brought about by sharing experiences. If I went to the pub with him and he asked what I was having I’d have to tell him I didn’t drink. There would immediately be a barrier between us, a loss of uniformity. He’d feel uncomfortable and inhibited to be drinking alcohol while I drank soft drinks. I’d also feel uncomfortable and inhibited, as well as resentful. Conversation would be stilted and awkward and friendship would fail to flourish.