Junction X (13 page)

“All right,” he said, and he laughed. “If you don’t tell my mother, I won’t.”

“What do you take me for?” I felt ten feet tall as I led the way to the entrance and paid for us all to get in. I let the twins go on the strict understanding that if they lost each other or if I had one word of complaint from anyone, we would be going home with no lunch, no ices and no purchases. They looked suitably subdued as they made their way into the throng, hand in hand.

The fair was relatively tedious. It wasn’t somewhere I would have considered going in the normal course of things; I prefer going to a shop where I can order what I want from someone that I know and have the guarantee of knowing what I’m buying and who to take it back to if something goes wrong. There’s something very earnest about a toy fair and always a surprising lack of children at them. In the main hall there were no children at all, not even my own, but a preponderance of men ranging from Alec’s age to men with white hair, or none at all. Some of the younger men even had girls with them, but they were all looking bored.

Alec gravitated to the first booth we came to and disappeared into the throng of anxious collectors while I meandered from stall to stall, rather glad that I hadn’t continued with the train layout I’d always thought I’d have one day. There were so many things that seemed essential. Track and rolling stock were just the beginning.

I caught up with Alec halfway around the hall. “Found anything?” He had a bag clutched in one hand.

“A few bits and pieces. A set of signals I’ve been after for a while.” He pulled the object from the bag. “And look at this!” Triumphantly he showed me a tiny set of five nameplates, the sort that adorn each brick built station but in perfect cast iron miniature.

I took them and separated them out. “Oh,” I said, as I came to the last one. I looked up at his beaming face.

“It’s our very own junction!”

I liked the way he said ‘our.’ That treacherous warmth threatened to tighten my trousers again. “I could do with a tea,” I said, giving him back the bag.

“Do you want me to go and find John and Mary?”

I nodded gratefully. It was getting very crowded and I’d rather they were somewhere I could keep an eye on them. “I’ll meet you in the tea room.” I was struck, as he wove through the crowd, at his air of maturity. I doubted very much if I’d been that self-possessed at seventeen.

I ordered tea for Alec and me, lemonade for the children and sticky buns for three. I bagged a table for four, which got me dirty looks from various people when they attempted to steal the chairs I was apparently not using, but finally Alec re-appeared, his hair delightfully mussed by the crush and with the twins hanging onto his jacket.

“Well, are you going to insist I buy you half the fair?” I demanded, as the children got comfortable and tucked in.

“Mary found a talking doll,” John said disparagingly. “The woman said it walked but it didn’t.”

“It did!” Mary looked daggers at her brother.

“You had to hold the shoulders and twist them for it to walk. Hardly a walking doll.”

I gave them a look and they continued to bicker but more quietly. “Thanks for finding them,” I said to Alec. He looked better now that his hair was a little more unruly, and the warmth of the hall gave his cheeks a pinkness which made him look younger.

“I found them negotiating with the stall holder.” He laughed. “Mary was getting a good price. She obviously has her father’s head for figures.” His smile was magnetic. I could hardly bear to look away from the corners of his mouth as they curved upwards, but if I didn’t look at this mouth, I could only look at his eyes and they were just as warm and just as dangerous. I bit my cheek to stop my erection building again.

“Do you want this doll?” I asked Mary.

“No,” she said, sullenly. Obviously John had convinced her it wasn’t the bargain she had thought it was.

“What is upstairs, anyway?” I asked.

“There’s one room with dolls and bears,” John said, “and one large room with trains.”

“Don’t you want to go up there?” I asked Alec.

“It’s okay. I stuck my head in when I went to get the twins.” His fingers played with the edge of his jacket, and I noticed his nails, ragged and bitten. “There aren’t stalls like down here. It’s just the big makers showing off layouts and new releases.”

“And they aren’t as nice as yours,” Mary said, surprising me, and beaming up at Alec who smiled back, uncertainly. For all his ease with me, he seemed a little overwhelmed by the children. I didn’t blame him.

“Well, perhaps not as detailed…but…”

I recognised the signs. He really wanted to go and look and was too damned polite to say.

“Finish your drinks,” I said, “and we’ll go and have a look. Perhaps we’ll find something for the horrors too.”

Ignoring their cries of “Oh, Daddy,” I led the way back into the crowds and climbed the stairs. The main hall’s floor was filled with tracks, both two-rail and three-, and locomotives were moving around every part. It was pretty impressive. Alec stood awhile absorbing it, before he made a beeline for the Hornby side. I stood with the children for a while, answering questions. Then, when Mary started to look bored, I led them over to where Alec was deep in discussion with a man of about my own age. The subject of their conversation appeared to be a familiar blue-green locomotive and I watched Alec’s absorption with the questions he was asking. I felt a sudden nausea, and a pain, deep and twisting—like nothing I’d felt before.

John surged forward. “That’s the Mallard,” he said to Mary. “It was in my
Look and Learn
. It was the fastest ever.”

The man with Alec straightened up. “That’s right,” he said. “Ah, this must be your dad, then?” He stuck a hand out which I had no option but to shake. “Your boy’s been telling me about your collection.”

I went to speak but Alec stood up, the locomotive’s tender in his hands. His cheeks were red and he bit at his bottom lip. The twins were giggling. “He’s not my dad, no.” He looked at me straight in the eye and my pain went away.

“That’s a shame,” the man said to me with a wry smile. “I thought I’d got a sale there, for certain.”

I watched Alec as he knelt down again and re-attached the tender to the Mallard. I was eight when it had beaten the world speed record for steam locomotives; I remember it was a big deal then. Funny how boys of all ages remembered the Mallard, but then it was a beautiful locomotive. No doubt about that.

 
I wandered over and picked up a brochure as Alec stood and let the train steam away from him around the outside track. There was a price list on the bench and the Mallard was priced at over four pounds. I was fairly sure that he’d only brought those ten shillings with him.

I leaned against the bench and watched him as he followed the train around the track with his eyes. His face seemed narrower, and the look on his face was one of almost…misery, as if he’d come close to something beautiful and had had to kill it before it had had a chance to shine. I moved toward him and gently touched his arm.

He flinched, seemed to come to himself, and then smiled. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“I think the twins have had enough, and it’s nearly lunchtime. I thought we might go to the seafront and get some lunch.”

His face clouded over again but I was firm. “Alec…” I said, warningly.

“All right. I don’t want to be made to sit in the car.” His face lit up, submitting to me. His smile made the room glow. “And would…would you mind…could you call me Alex? No one calls me that.”

I felt exposed, and I could feel my cheeks colouring, something that I hadn’t done for more years than I could remember—unless it was in the dark on a warm French beach. I wanted to tell him how the name suited him and how he should call me the one name that no one else did, but I was still too scared. I was terrified to push, because I knew he only meant to be friendly and wasn’t longing to touch me the way I was him. There was a sugar-spun thread between us, and I was sure that if I grasped it or even tugged on it, it would shatter, leaving nothing but the taste of him as a sweet memory.

I coughed. “I’d be happy to.” I handed him the keys. “And you won’t have to sit in the car while we stuff ourselves. Take the kids and lock them in and I’ll be out in a moment.” I gave the impression that I needed the toilet but, in reality, I was more devious—or I thought I was, back then. I had no idea what I would become.

+ + +

Despite the chaperonage of the children, the day—when I look back on it from this end of the tunnel—was full of sunshine and laughter. We ate; we walked along the pink pavement of tourist’s dreams. We walked in the sun, and there were few enough times we ever did
that
again. I was sorry when I had to end it, and the children’s cries of disappointment echoed my own silent regrets.

“Can we come back, Daddy?” Mary asked me, and I swung her up and carried her back to the car, promising that we would.

The journey back to The Avenue was too short. It wasn’t until I got out for the last time that I saw that the armrest between Alec and me was pushed up and out of sight. I assumed the children had moved it. Valerie came to scoop up the twins and I said I would be in in a moment. She shut the door and I motioned him back into the garage. As he stepped out of the sunshine into the shadows, I opened the boot, suddenly uncertain of what to say, embarrassed about what I had done.

“Look,” I said. “I know you are going to hate this; it was hard enough getting you to accept allowing me to treat you. But…” I completely ran out of words. I had no idea how to explain why it was important to me to have done what I’d done, so I just pulled the box wrapped in brown paper out of the boot and held it out. “If you don’t want it, then give to a hospital or a children’s home or something.”

He frowned once, hesitating as if he was trying to work out what I was saying. I couldn’t blame him; I had hardly been coherent. Then he reached out without stepping closer, taking the box from my hands. He stared at the paper for long seconds, his face unreadable, but I swear he knew what was in that box before he ripped the paper off. I felt my heart race as he stood there, staring at the Mallard’s picture on the box.

“Why did you do this?” He didn’t look up for a moment.

“Because you wanted it. Because I saw your face—”

He moved forward, holding the box between us. “I can’t.”

I felt then that I’d known he couldn’t. It was too much. Too expensive But I was still disappointed. I was hopeless at any kind of gesture. I always seemed to do too much—or too little.

“I…I know. I’m sorry.”

He put the box on the workbench and held out his hand. “Thank you, though.” I shook his hand; in a heartbeat, he darted forward and kissed me hard on the lips.

I have tried to describe that moment to myself and to Alex a hundred times, but how can one explain a death and a rebirth? How can one explain the end of everything and the terrifying future of a half-opened door with no idea what’s beyond it? I can’t speak of the taste of his mouth on mine because I don’t recall how it felt to be born, not the pain or the joy of it. All I do recall was crushing his hand and, for one long second, letting him kiss me before pushing him away. But I knew I’d waited too long before reacting, and now he would know.

He was still too close, and his eyes were anxious but held something else—hope, perhaps?

I could only echo what he’d said to me. “Why?”

He was still holding my hand as if he’d never let go. “Because you wanted it,” he said simply. “Because I saw your face.”

Chapter 10

My heart was thudding so hard that I had to focus consciously on what he had just said, and my blood was on fire. As I looked at him, I couldn’t ever remember thinking of him as anything but what he was—not an awkward gangly child, but a beautiful young man.

“I can’t tell you how many times I imagined doing that,” he said.

I think his words were more shocking than the fact that he’d kissed me at all. I wasn’t handling the moment well. I should have said something, given him something in return for what he’d given me, but I just stood there and stared at him, a deer in headlights, teetering between fear and elation.

I swallowed. “I… You. I didn’t know.”

“Neither did I, at first,” he said. His voice was calmer than mine, as if he was in control. I think he was. “About you, I mean. But you looked at me sometimes as if you wanted to touch me…”