Scrap Metal (19 page)

A thump from the kitchen. I knew it well. My granddad’s fist meeting the surface of the table, the opening note of a symphony of rage and disbelief—at the conduct of his grandsons, the prices of feed, any other provocations from an intransigent world. “Cameron!”

Cam glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, shit. I’d better go.”

“Cameron, laddie, are you there? You are no’ telling me we’ve spent five hundred pounds on feed supplements this blasted quarter. Nichol!”

“You don’t have to deal with this,” I whispered. “I can stay and sort him out if you like.”

He grabbed my hand, gave it a brief warm squeeze. “No. Run for it while the going’s good. Quick, before he smells your nice cologne.”

Archie was nowhere to be seen in the Harvest when I got there. Tuesday nights tended to be slow, and Mac the bartender soon spotted me scanning the tables, affecting not to notice the disgusted looks I was copping from the grizzled old fishermen having their pint by the fire. I was late, Mac informed me. Archie had gone on to the Catfish. Mac had a sarcastic air about him. I thanked him and left, tugging out my shirt at the back to hide the worst of my labels. Perhaps Brodick wasn’t yet ready for my big-city style.

But my alarm bells were starting to sound. The Catfish seafood bistro was one of the only places on Arran you could eat without the accompaniment of electronic bagpipe music. It was quiet, candlelit, nicely situated right on the waterfront. For many years it had been the place Archie and I repaired to on a date. I jogged down the alley. I was more than half minded to go straight back to the truck, but I just had to check that Reggie and the rest of them weren’t gathered round a table in there, enjoying birthday drinks and waiting for me, unlikely scene though that was.

No. Just Archie. He was seated in our favourite spot, the table for two in the half-moon window that looked out over the bay. When I pushed open the door, he glanced up guiltily, lowering the menu he’d been studying. I came to a halt. Donald Croft, who owned and ran the place, greeted me casually, as if it had been an ordinary night. To all intents and purposes it was—Archie and Nichol meeting for dinner, as if the last five years had never happened. I’d walked into the lobster pot.

And, now I came to think of it, Reggie Fletcher’s birthday had never been in May. I knew that. Had some part of me consented to this trap?

Archie, with a look of a man as well hung for a sheep as for a lamb, offered me a cautious wolf-whistle. “Wow, Nicky. You dressed up for me.”

I swept up to the table. I wasn’t about to cause a scene, even though there was only a handful of other diners to entertain. I pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him. “No,” I said softly. “I dressed up for a night on the town with the lads. Where are they, Archie?”

“Oh, you know how it is—a few of them dropped out, and…”

“Bollocks. You set me up. Why?”

“Well…” He gestured at Donald, who appeared at the table so fast with a bottle of wine he must have had advance instruction. The wine was Chenin Blanc, my favourite for a nice fish supper. “I never get to see you anymore, do I? Thanks, Don, I’ll pour it myself.”

I waited, staring blindly across the waterfront, till Donald was out of earshot. “Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“Would you have come?”

“Of course not.”

He sighed. I didn’t look at him while he poured out the drinks. It was a pretty summer evening, and there was plenty for me to watch on the beach—innocent dog walkers, old ladies enjoying their stroll, young couples of the type who could fling their arms around each other and snog in full sight of God and Brodick Castle.

“All right,” he said after a long, tense silence. “I’m sorry. Why don’t you just go?”

“I’ve driven all the way down from Seacliff for this. I’ve been up since five o’clock. I think I’ll have my dinner while I’m here.”

“Yes. Good.” Another small gesture, and there was Donald again, pencil poised, as though he had no custom on earth but our own. “I’ll have the scampi, please. And the mackerel for Nichol, with horseradish, and can you remember to crisp up his chips?”

“
Archie!
” That did turn a few heads. With an effort I restrained myself. I sorely needed a drink, I realised, and I grabbed the glass of cold Chenin and knocked half of it back without noticing. “For God’s sake. I haven’t been pickled in formaldehyde since we last—”

“Och, no. I’m sorry,” Donald interrupted smoothly, as if it had been his fault. “Would you prefer something else, Nichol?”

I wouldn’t. The mackerel was the best thing on the Catfish menu, and I did love my chips well crisped. I thought about demanding Dover sole to make a point, but I was here now, wasn’t I? Lunch had been a sandwich, and I was bloody hungry. “No. No, that’s fine, thanks.”

He was gone, taking the menus with him. Archie leaned his elbows on the table. He’d dressed up too, in a smart white shirt and a little waistcoat I’d bought him on one of our day trips to Glasgow. He said, nervously, “You still like some of the same things, then?”

“Yes, I do.” The wine was extremely good, for example—I polished off my glass and didn’t protest when he instantly poured me another. “Just don’t bloody
order
for me.”

“Sorry. I thought if I got everything to the table for you fast enough, you might at least stay long enough to eat.”

“I don’t get it, Archie. Why would you even want me to? You stopped us coming here because you didn’t want to look too gay.”
And three weeks later, you dumped me
. I swallowed the bitterness of that, but a wicked humour stirred in me. “Oh, hang on. Is it an outreach programme? Helping the minorities to trust the police?”

“That’s harsh, Nicky. I’m not saying I don’t deserve it, after everything I did to you, but…it’s harsh.”

I turned the wineglass in my hands. Two thoughts were forming in my head—first, that although I’d done my share of excess student drinking in the city, I was well out of practice now, and secondly, that although Archie had sat and justified himself to me for the better part of three hours on the night of our breakup, he’d never then or since admitted
doing
anything to me at all. We were adults, he’d said. People changed. I should learn to accept it.

The wine met painful memory and I said, not even meaning to, “You broke my heart.”

“Oh, God. Don’t.”

“Why not? You brought me here for this nice tête-à-tête. What did you think we’d end up talking about—your brilliant career?” I caught my breath. I’d had no idea I was still so angry. When I finally looked up and met his eyes, he’d gone pale as only a redhead could, proper parchment white, the freckles standing out across his nose. I shook my head. What the hell was the point of making him miserable now? I topped off his glass and my own. “How’s the brilliant career, Archie?”

“Truth? I can’t believe I gave you up for it.”

The anger died. I wasn’t much good at holding on to a grudge. Maybe all I’d ever wanted was to hear he regretted it, that I hadn’t been easy to bargain away. “Is it…not working out for you, then?”

“Oh, Nicky, I’m bored stupid. The highlight of my week was a callout to Shiskine Golf Club. Someone’s buggy had gone missing. And it hadn’t even been nicked—just parked in the wrong bloody shed. I found it. Case closed. PC Drummond triumphs again.”

He could make me laugh. I’d forgotten that. I considered pointing out that he’d marred the compliment of his regrets a bit, but he looked so woeful. And nothing could come of this anyway—whatever he thought might be the results of his ambush, we were just two old mates meeting up for a meal.

Don brought the scampi out, and the fragrant mackerel, and another bottle of wine. “I’m sorry it’s not turned out to be gunfights and car chases,” I offered, and saw him relax a bit. “Sorry I snapped at you too. Look, let’s not spoil dinner. What else is going on with you? How’s your sister and your mam?”

That was the trouble. We could just drop from hot debate like that into ordinary
craic
. We had all our history and our childhoods to fall back on, all our routines. It was very routine of us to come to the Catfish for dinner, talk about family and friends, have a few drinks and go back to Archie’s flat. He didn’t even have to ask me. At the end of our meal, we peaceably split the bill, got up and left.

There was the familiar street, his prosaic top-floor perch above the bank. Arran didn’t run to police accommodation, and maybe it was reassuring to the Scottish Royal to have a copper living up there. He’d left the lights on. There was the set of mossy steps you had to negotiate to get to his back door. There inside me was that rippling, floating sense that if I wasn’t exactly drunk, I certainly couldn’t drive home, and on such occasions I always stayed the night.

Stayed, and once Archie had checked the doors and closed each set of curtains carefully tight, we’d go to his bed and screw one another blind. He’d become quite good at it, I recalled, especially considering he’d started with me from scratch and quite uninstructed. He could put me on my knees on the mattress, find his way into my body and do what was needful until I came, though he’d made me so scared of the neighbours that I never lost my sense of the moment, of having to hang on to the bedhead and bite my lips to keep from yelling out. My own prowess had been satisfactory too. We’d been young. We’d had no one else to take all this out upon, and God knew we’d loved one another.

He let me in, and I stood in the living room, remembering. It was very routine of him to come up and kiss me, then to take my hand.

He led me to the bedroom. Nothing had changed there either. It was the plain, functional space it had always been. Even the duvet cover was the same, though a few shades paler with sunlight and laundering. Brown and blue stripes, with curtains to match, a relic of the eighties donated to him by his mum.

I cast around me for something unfamiliar, anything to mark time’s passage and remind me that I had moved on and so had he. To bring it home to me that I was about to climb into his bed out of habit. God, those bloody awful curtains, and I knew the inside of them so well… Yes, there they were, tightly shut.

Still, once he’d sealed us off from the world, he liked me to be naked. I could see his reflection in the mirror by the wardrobe. He was watching, waiting. I would strip down, then so would he, and we’d get under the duvet and rather decorously kiss and roll around until we were ready, as if following directions in a textbook. All right. Nothing wrong with that. There’d be no strings—he wouldn’t dare try to attach one, not after the way he’d left me—and I’d be a better, saner friend to Cam with some of my steam blown off. Actually, I wished I felt a bit steamier. Something about Archie’s beige nylon carpet, as I bent to take off my socks, was quelling my erection. The food and drink weren’t helping, and neither was my sleep debt. Glancing down to unfasten my shirt, I stifled a yawn.

“Nichol!” He grabbed me fiercely by the shoulders, spun me round to face him.

That woke me up. “Archie? You all right?”

“No. I need you. I’ve got to have you, right now.”

Well, this was new. I snatched a couple of breaths as he backed me up towards the bed, then lost them as he landed on top of me.

“God’s sake,” I managed, chuckling. “What’s got into you?”

“I was so stupid to let you go. I’m not gonna get my damn promotion, gay or straight. I’m never gonna get off this fucking island.”

But it would’ve been a fair deal otherwise?
I knew I should ask. I shouldn’t be letting him rip his way into my last designer shirt, sending buttons flying, though that hardly mattered since I’d most probably never get off the fucking island either. Nothing mattered. My ma and my brother were dead. I was trapped on a rock in the ocean with an old man who clearly wished—one day he would come out and tell me to my face—that I’d died in Alistair’s place. And the light that had shone into this, the sunshine and the springtime beauty, was meaningless because no matter how completely I had fallen in love, Cameron couldn’t return it, would be gone one day between sunset and a shift in the wind…

Cam.
Archie got me properly pinned down and planted a kiss on me, a big one right on the mouth. There was nothing wrong with Archie’s kiss. Nothing, except every detail of it—taste, heat, pressure—threw me back to the Saturday night, when I’d wanted Cameron so much I’d wept, and he’d pressed his mouth to mine and silenced me.
Cam
.

I pushed Archie off me and rolled away. My head spun with the force of revelation and I sat up. “No. Sorry, Archie. No.”

“You’re kidding.” I felt the mattress shift as he came to kneel behind me. “Come on. You were getting undressed for me.”

“I know.”

“Is it because I didn’t give you time? I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever you want, Nicky. You know I can make you enjoy it. I’ll open the curtains.”

I laughed painfully. “Don’t be daft. I don’t want to flash our goings-on across half Brodick—I never did. Just didn’t want you to be ashamed.”

“I was, I know.” His hands landed hard on my shoulders, kneading, trying to pull me back. “Forgive me.”

“Already have. It isn’t that.”

“What, then? Oh, God—
not
that wee rag tail of a—”

“Shush, Archie. Don’t call him any names.” Honesty was boiling up in me. I couldn’t keep this raw flower of truth from unfolding, not to spare Archie or Cam or myself. “It is about him. Yes.”

“Oh,
shit
, Nichol.” Archie dropped me. He subsided onto his backside. “Are the pair of you…?”

“No. I’m not sure we ever will.”

“Then…”

“I want to wait for him. I don’t care how long.”

A silence fell. It ought to have been dreadful, but I wasn’t really attending. My senses were stretched out between this little box of a room and the miles of dark moorland that divided me from Seacliff. A curlew silence, lapped round by waves, and on the far side of it another room, another box. It was late. Cameron kept farmers’ hours by now—he’d be in bed. I wished to hell I hadn’t drunk so much I couldn’t drive home.