THE LOOK

~~Ned~~

Dear God, it was only a look. You know? Afterwards, I thought that I could have been wrong. Not that the man didn’t look at Thom, but that he didn’t mean what I thought he did. I mean, I’m likely to think that way, I see that sort of attention in all kinds of places. Other people never imagine just how often I do.

But I could have been wrong.

I’m telling the story backwards, of course, so let me try to set things in context. From the very start of Amelie’s party, I was distracted. For me, it’s both a joy and a misery at that kind of family event – being surrounded by people. On the one hand, I’ve been an anti-social bastard for years – or so my siblings tell me – and it’s a rare pleasure to get out and practise my rather rusty conversational skills. It’s especially good if the event is a wedding or some other happy occasion. This one was in honor of Amelie’s engagement, the youngest of my sister Dana’s children. Dana’s never had a very large house, but it was full that afternoon – full of relatives and partners; full of neighbors who were rather too keen on Dana’s free booze for my liking; full of Amelie’s college friends who were noisy, clumsy and astonishingly enthusiastic about living the moment, and most of whom seemed to subscribe to piercings and tattoos as the new black.

That look was superb on Amelie, of course. So call me biased. But she was beautiful and young and uninhibitedly in love – what’s not to admire? At one stage, she’d been showing off a new tongue stud to my aunt, her great-aunt, maybe not a wise move. Luckily, Aunt Elsie’s eyesight was never the best after a few glasses of sherry, and she’d just simpered and nodded. Dana caught my gaze in passing and shrugged, ruefully. The trials of parenthood, her gesture had said, eloquently.

I couldn’t say I understood – but I sympathised.

On the other hand, for me these events are a trial. And not just because the younger nieces and nephews seem to grin at me all the time and treat me like some aged uncle who’d be better suited to a stair-lift and a nice warm blanket. I’m only the oldest sibling by a few years. But I don’t fit into their categories, I suppose, despite the liberal scattering of gifts and bank notes that usually gets the younger generation back on my side.

“Why don’t you come over more often?” they wheedle. Some of them have the grace to laugh, knowing they’ve been caught out in their mercenary cupboard-love.

“Why don’t you get married, Uncle Ned?” they murmur. “Wouldn’t you like children just like us?”

Today, Dana stopped beside me in the kitchen. I was on my own in there, pretending to wash up some of the glasses, grateful for a moment’s oasis in amongst the relentless party spirit. She was carrying plates of half-wrapped sandwiches, but she put them down for long enough to put a hand on my shoulder. “You need to mix, Ned,” she said, her scolding the usual cover for her concern. “Don’t hide here, out of the way.”

“I’ve mixed,” I protested, mildly. “I’ve taken Eric’s mother-in-law to the toilet twice, saved Amelie’s fiancé from sitting in the gateau, and listened to Great Uncle William’s tales of the Blitz. Oh, and handed out pocket money that would equal the first repayment on the national debt. Haven’t you been taking notes?”

She smiled, but her eyes were still searching my face. “Is it so bad, Ned? To be here… when he’s not?”

I frowned. Not now, I thought. We can talk about it later. Or not.

“He’s gone,” she said, even more softly. “Your best friend... your usual buddy at these events. I’m so sorry for your loss, but it’s been months now. You need to move on.”

“Dana.” I sighed. There was a painful knot starting up in my throat. Someone roared with laughter in the living room, and we both flinched. “You’ve been drinking.”

She grimaced. “Don’t be an asshole. So have you.”

I met her gaze. “Not enough,” I said, in a rare burst of openness. “It’s not so easily done. Friendship doesn’t just… move on.”

She half nodded, but her face showed confusion. Of all my delightful, flighty, frustrating, lively sisters, Dana was the one who knew me best. It didn’t mean she knew everything.

A couple of people came out into the kitchen looking for drinks, laughing. “Go back in,” I said gently. I nudged her off towards the living room again.

I nodded hello to the arrivals, one of my cousins and his wife. And some friends of Amelie’s whose names I couldn’t – nor was expected to – remember. A blond man whose natural arrogance was as obvious to me as his blindingly bright pink shirt. A girl who looked around, frowned at not finding her friends, and left the room. A couple of thin young men with the dyed black hair that followed the popular Goth fashion, accentuating their pale, washed-out skin. And Thom, Jack’s son.

Thom grinned at me and lifted his glass in acknowledgement to a family friend. Just a couple of years older than Amelie, we’d once thought they might end up together. There would have been a bitter irony in that, though I’d never admitted that to anyone. But Amelie had fallen in love with a musician, Thom’s widowed father had fallen very seriously ill, and Thom had fallen into the role of nurse. Everyone knew the story; the romance was not to be. Not that one, anyway.

Thom moved across the room to talk to me, the others chatting amongst themselves. “Ned,” he smiled. I appreciated the way he never felt the need to prefix it with ‘Uncle’, though some people still insisted on it for adult friends of their family. I’d lived in the same street as Thom’s family for almost all my life, only moving away a few months ago. I’d been to nursery and then school with Jack, his father. I’d watched Jack grow up, alongside me. I’d watched him laugh and cry and fall over and grow to adulthood at a weird, gangly pace. He played football with a passion, though not well enough to follow his dream into a professional career, so he’d settled for a mediocre but steady job for the sake of security. I’d been with him to celebrate having Thom, and then to grieve over losing his wife. Then I’d watched him grow very, very sick, in the days when cancer was known in our pitying hearts but never mentioned in polite conversation. I’d visited him more than any of his own family ever had – apart from Thom - and people had commented what a good neighbor I was. And then I’d watched him wracked with pain, waste away and die.

They had no idea at all what a good neighbor I was – or wasn’t.

“How is it? How are you nowadays?” I didn’t want to bring unhappiness into this happy afternoon, but the words spilled out of me, regardless. Thom looked so like his father – the same tousled dark curls, the same crooked nose, the same eyes that creased at the edges when he smiled.

He didn’t seem to mind my intrusion. That’s what I’d always recognized in Thom, since he was a boy – the same courage and honesty that Jack had. The same tolerance, the same easy agreeableness. The very opposite to my own feelings, that caused me to rail against the injustices in life, to alienate the very people I needed to charm, to scupper the rare opportunities I had for forming lasting relationships, apart from within my own family.

Apart from Jack.

“Ned, I’m okay. I miss Dad a lot but it’s better that he’s not around, suffering. Right?” He smiled that same smile, and the pain cramped in my belly. “I’ll learn to cope with it – to get along without him. How about you?”

“Me?”

Thom frowned, as if puzzled. “He talked about you a lot. You were best friends. I just thought…”

“Yes, I miss him a lot too.” I couldn’t hear my voice very well, it sounded weak and distant.

He flushed. Maybe he’d been drinking, too, though I’d never seen him drunk or under the influence of anything. He was a careful young man, people said. “Ned, look…” He bit at his lower lip as if he didn’t know whether to go on or not. Was he afraid of offending me somehow? Thom, the natural heir of his father’s caution, the well-behaved, dutiful son?

“I want you to know I understand.” His eyes lifted to mine and his expression was disturbed. His voice was so quiet I had to lean forward a little to hear him. “At least, I think I do. I’ve been wanting to say this ever since Dad… died. You were such a good friend – so devoted to him. You and him…” His eyes darted away again.

“We’d been friends since children.” I coughed, trying to clear my throat. “Least I could do.”

Thom nodded, but he wasn’t really listening to me. His mind was on something else, something that he wanted to get off his chest. I knew the look, because Jack had often worn it, too. “It’s different nowadays, Ned. The world’s more tolerant, you know? You don’t have to let it eat you up inside, hiding how you feel – you don’t need to feel ashamed, or anything. Okay, so maybe that’s naïve, it’s not completely easy, and plenty of people are still so bloody narrow-minded…” He flushed again. “I’m saying this badly. I guess I hope it’s easier to be different. To choose different paths. To be honest about it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m afraid.”

The words were an automatic politeness. I looked at Thom’s eyes and instead I saw Jack’s. The way he would peer at me when he was determined or angry, like the time he caught me shoplifting and we fought, physically, on the path outside my house. That was maybe the first time I felt his strength directed against me – even as a teenager he never picked fights, but I’d really riled him that day. He’d gripped me and punched wildly, bringing me to the ground so he lay on me, his face red and sweaty, his hands so tight on my arms he bruised me, his heart hammering against my chest, his legs stretched out the length of my own. I’d stared into his face and all I could remember now, after so many years, was my plaintive crying, apologising, shouting at him, trying to calm him down. To make his disappointment go away, to make things right between us, and still the hammering, hammering of his heart against my chest…

Thom was staring at me, rather pale. I couldn’t focus properly on him.

Jack had never been that pale when he was a young man. I remembered Jack’s red, angry face and the warmth of his skin against mine that day, a drop of his spittle on my cheek. No one won the fight – we were broken up by our parents, who never understood why we fought in the first place. He never told on me, either. When they pulled us apart, there was one astonishing second when we still gripped hard to each other – then he wrenched away, still angry with me perhaps, and I knew I was the only one clinging to that moment. And that’s how it would always be. Jack glanced back at me and his look warned me of something I didn’t even understand myself. It was a statement of the rules – of the limits to which he was prepared to go, and no further. It set the tone for all the years ahead.

“Ned?”

There was so much more; so many memories; such layers of experience we built between us. I remembered how Jack would laugh at my more pathetic jokes when no one else did. Help me choose clothes for a job interview; celebrate with me at the pub when I got the job. We’d go camping in the spring, fishing in the summer, playing pool in the winter. Spend our weekends under my car, fixing the gearbox, even though the damned thing never ran properly. Jack had been a party animal, unlike his son – he’d been the social one, always pushing me forward, laughing at my attempts at dating, accusing me of being a coward. His own eyes were always on the women, his success so much better than mine, with his charm and his easy going tolerance, and his smile…

“Are you okay?” Thom looked distressed. He put a hand on my arm. His face swam into clarity, his features shifting away from the days of my youth and into the blunt reality of my sister’s present-day kitchen. Over by the fridge, a beer in his hand, the blond man who’d come into the room with Thom was frowning at us.

There was noise at the doorway again - more young people coming in. Two girls, Amelie’s flatmates, draped around each other and bemoaning the loss of another from their exclusively feminine gang. Behind them was another man, tall; dark-haired; looking a little older than the girls. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him at any other family functions. He was strikingly attractive, though not in any movie-star way. Neither of the girls seemed to be with him. I drew back against the sink, waiting for Thom to go over and join the new arrivals, he knew most of Amelie’s friends from college. The dark man glanced over at us, his gaze skimming over me and settling on Thom.

And the look lingered there.

I couldn’t drag my own eyes away. Realization washed gently over me, but with a cold chill that made me shiver. He had eyes for Thom, and Thom alone. It was something gentle yet fierce – both passionate and compassionate. I saw things in that look that scared me; shocked me; thrilled me. I saw things that I saw in my own mirror, and had done for most of my life. Things that I’d hidden from, denied and suffered. Nothing good had ever come of them, for me – I’d never let it.

I glanced at Thom – he’d seen the man’s interest. There was a slight smile on his face; an answering flush on his cheeks.

Then the blond man launched himself away from the fridge and took a step towards Thom. The tension of the moment broke apart. The dark-haired man backed out of the kitchen, all the other people following, the girls tumbling around him with fresh drinks and musical laughter.

I thought I saw Thom’s shoulders sag a little. We were alone again, apart from the blond man who stood some kind of guard in the background. In a sudden, spontaneous gesture, not something I’d ever been known for, I grasped Thom’s arm and pulled him in closer.

“Thom, I’m sorry.” I sounded breathless. “I know you mean well. He’d be proud of you, you know? Jack would. Even if he was narrow-minded in some ways. And you know he was.”

Thom’s eyes widened. “I don’t think…no, I didn’t mean me…” But his eyes told me that was a lie. We both knew it. We both shared this. The pain in my chest was as tangible as if he’d struck me.

I gripped him harder, the memory of a hot day and a young man’s breath on my neck making me dizzy. “Be honest with yourself, too. It’s too late for me. Don’t let that happen to you.”

Thom glanced over at the blond man then back to me. The blond man’s look was harsh with possessiveness and suspicion. I didn’t see any sympathy in his eyes for Thom – any devotion. Yet it was obvious that he considered they were together. Thom was still very flushed.

“Ned, look… I haven’t spoken to anyone…” He sighed, still wary, dropping his voice even further in case someone else came in. “I’m not sure. Of anything. You understand? God, this is weird, talking to you like this…a hell of a relief, too, though. I just don’t want to upset anyone…”

I frowned. “Fuck them. Isn’t that what you’d say?” What you’d wanted to say to me?

Thom started to laugh, startled. “Ned, you’re … I don’t know what I’d say! What’s brought all this on?”

I pulled my hands away from him. I recalled the older man who’d just been in the kitchen with us and the dark, devoted depths of his eyes when he looked at Thom. There had been so much in there that I’d recognised. That I might have wanted for my own. That had never been.

“Go back to the party,” I said. “Go with whomever you want – whoever makes you happy. But make sure that they do. Live life, Thom. Grab it with both hands.” I lifted my palms and stared at them, as if they still bore the imprint of that fight from years ago, scarred with the rough scrape of pavement and aching with the soft, illicit, unrequited desire for another man’s flesh. For another man’s love.

“With both hands.”