Neil went back to his house, opened the street door and went upstairs to the first floor with the boy. There he opened his apartment door, switched on the light and stood aside to allow the boy into the small entrance, followed him in and closed the door.
"Over there to the right is the living room. Go on in."
"May I go to the toilet, first?"
"Certainly. It is the first door on the left. Meanwhile I will get you a drink. Is beer alright?"
"Whatever."
Neil switched on the gas radiator in the living room's fireplace, then went into the kitchen and got two cans of beer and two glasses, and took them into the living room where he sat down on one of the two armchairs there, leaving the one nearest the fireplace vacant. He heard water running in the bathroom then the boy joined him and sat on the vacant armchair, slouching into it and relaxing. Neil handed him a glass and a beer. The boy took a sip.
Then, looking Neil in the eye, he asked him, "What's your name?"
"Neil. Neil Sawers."
"I'm Norman. Do you live alone?"
"Yes, this is only a small place."
"Do you have a woman?"
"No."
Norman nodded as though understanding. "I guessed so. You are not interested in women, are you?"
"I had a girlfriend, but she left," Neil answered drily.
"Ah."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"I had one. Shit! Because of her, I'm in fucking trouble now. What a mess!"
"Trouble? What kind of trouble? Did you make her pregnant?"
"No. I don't know... I don't think so."
"So what then?"
"She is seventeen. She wanted to fuck. I fucked her. Then she accused me of rape. So her old man reported me to the police. Forcible rape of a minor. But she wanted it just as much as me, if not more than me. And the funny thing is that she wasn't even a virgin that shit! So, I had to run away to avoid ending up in jail. It makes me sick!"
"Couldn't you hire a barrister?"
"With whose money? Barristers are expensive."
"Couldn't your parents help you?"
"Who? Mum? Dad? Dad has never given a shit about me, since the day I was born. Mum took most of my weekly pay packet leaving me next to nothing -- just enough for my cigarettes and for the pub. Dad would be glad to see me in jail, he's always hated me."
"Come on! Hated? Aren't you exaggerating?"
"No. He didn't want me. I was a mistake. The condom broke on the old man. And since that night when Dad fucked Mum and the condom broke, and I was conceived, all my heartily cursed life has been a hell of a mess. All I needed was that bitch of a Betty to make the mess complete. I wasn't even planning to fuck her, I swear. But she turned me on, and when you're really aroused, even a saint would have difficulty trying to stop."
"She asked you not to put it in?"
"Yeah. And I even stopped. But she kept on touching me up, and rubbing up against me and... She wouldn't stop, that cow, even when I asked her to. So, she got me so horny that... that I fucked her, the bitch! She got exactly what she was after. But who has to pay, now? Me, that's who! I've lost my job, my home, everything. What a lousy world!"
Neil listened and nodded.
Norman sipped some more beer, then continued, "And now the law is after me, so I can't even look for a fucking job; try and settle down."
"When did you run away?"
"About six months ago"
"And... how have you managed to survive?"
"You know how it is... Whenever I saw they were looking for somebody in a shop, a pub, or a restaurant, I went and worked for a few days under a fake name. When they insisted I had to bring my papers, you know, the NI and the Form 45 and all that bullshit that they ask you for, at that point I would tell them I had found a better job, make them pay me for that short period and off I would go... Or else I would sit in a BR station or in the underground, asking passers-by for change. There are people who've lived that way for years. But I don't like it. People passing by don't give a shit about you, as though you are transparent, or they look at you as if you are... a dog's turd. Even those who give you some change look at you as though you are an insect... God, it's humiliating! It's just dis-gus-sting! But then, you came along, and gave me a smile. And you gave me a fiver and even your scarf... Why did you do it?"
"Why? Because I could."
"You aren't a rich man, judging by where you live."
"Rich people, usually, don't give..."
"You pitied me?"
"No. I just thought that you must have been cold. It's a cold night, isn't it?"
Norman finished his beer.
"Would you like another?"
"If you've got one..."
Neil stood up, went to the kitchen and grabbed two more cans out of the refrigerator. When he got back, Norman was looking through the tapes beside the stereo.
"A fan of Jazz, I see."
"Quite. Don't you like it?"
"There's better. Disco music. What do you do when you're at home? Do friends visit?"
"No. I stay on my own. I listen to music, look at the TV, read."
"Why did you smile at me?"
"Because you're a human being. Are you hungry? Would you like something to eat?"
"No. But don't you have friends? Either women or men?"
"No."
"At work?"
"Colleagues, not friends. If you're hungry, it's no big deal..."
"Not now. But isn't it hard, being alone?"
"No. Yes... well, I don't know. After all I've spent most of my life alone -- even when I was a child. For only three years I lived with another person and I wasn't lonely. And we were also friends. Three years! I thought I had found happiness -- my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You know what I mean? My whole life changed. You see, there was no more gloom, no more bleakness. There was warmth, joy, colour... I thought there was also love... I was wrong. I was just used for three years, and then... they took off. And I was left, like a fool. And everything became gloomy again. I was alone again. Do you understand what it feels like to be alone?"
"Only for the last six months, but that's enough. Were you in love?"
"Yes, my first and only love. My great illusion... three years of illusion. It was so sweet... everything seemed to be going well... what a fool! I was well and truly deceived. God, I feel so sad at being alone again."
"Why did you smile at me?"
"So that I wouldn't die inside."
"Younger than you?"
"Five years younger."
"Then she wasn't so young. She was an adult."
"I was twenty-six, when it began. And it wasn't a woman; it was a boy -- a university student. It suited him to have food and shelter for free... His University course ended, and the very day after his graduation ceremony, I organized a party for him. I got home... and he'd already left. He took all his belongings. There wasn't even a farewell letter, a note, two lines... not a word. Nothing."
"The bastard! Didn't you look for him? Didn't you have his family's address?"
"Look for him? HE left! What point would there have been in looking for him?"
"To spit in his face, at least."
"Would that have made me feel less hurt, less alone? No, it wouldn't have."
"But you were in love?"
"Yes."
"With a male?"
"That's right."
"You don't act like a queen."
"Not all gay people are queens."
"But you... you like doing it only with men?"
"I had a girlfriend, before him. It was all right with her. But I feel better with a man, a boy. And anyway, I loved him... I didn't love her. Yes, I loved him."
"Ha, there's no such thing as love... it's just a myth. Did he fuck you or was it the other way round?"
"Don't you think that's something... that it's my own business?" Neil asked looking at Norman harshly.
"OK, OK! I was just curious. When it's between a boy and a girl it's straightforward... But I feel it was you that fucked him -- you're not at all effeminate."
"He wasn't either."
"Do you have any photos of him?"
"No. I tore them all up when he left."
"But you haven't forgotten him."
"Right."
"And... didn't you look for someone else, afterwards?"
"No."
"Do you mean that, after him, you haven't had sex with anyone?"
"No, I have. But nothing serious. And most of times, I do it by myself."
"You beat it, you mean?"
"Don't you?"
"Sure, I do. But... how come you became a fag?"
"I think I've always been one."
"But you've had a girl, you said so."
"Yes, before meeting him. I was twenty-one, she twenty-two. We were together for two years. Then she fell in love with someone else and left me."
"Did she know you were a fag?"
"No."
"But, did things work between you?"
"In bed? Yes. While I was with him, she came back looking for me. She wanted to get back together. But I had him and things seemed to be going well. So I told her I didn't want to get back with her. And so, now, here I am -- without him and without her. Buggered any way you look at it."
"If she came looking for you now, would you take her back?"
"Over my dead body! I'll see her in hell."
"Yeah, and so you should. A person can't desert you and then come back just when they feel like it, can they? Women are all the same, they're all bitches."
"Men are just the same, believe me."
"Perhaps. When you smiled at me... did you want to take me to your bed, to fuck with me?"
"No."
"You didn't even think about it?"
"No."
"Aren't I your type?"
"It's not that. It simply didn't cross my mind."
"OK, I believe you."
"You're not a Londoner, are you? Are you from Bristol maybe?"
"That's right! It's the accent, isn't it?"
"A little bit, but not so much. My mother was from Bristol."
"Are your parents alive?"
"Neither."
"No relatives?"
"Distant cousins. In Lincolnshire. But we hardly know each other."
"Why did you bring me here?"
"You wanted to talk, didn't you?"
"That's all?"
"You want to know whether I want to fuck with you? No, don't worry. Simply because a guy is gay, it doesn't mean he wants to jump into the first pair of trousers that passes by, even if he likes the chap inside of them," Neil answered, raising his voice.
"Hey, hey, hey! Calm down, brother! I just wanted to know. You are the first fag I've met, that I could talk to. You seem an OK guy, I must admit. It's just that, in the last few months, more than one has tried it on with me, you see?"
I believe you. Vultures are everywhere, whether they're gay, or straight or women."
"True. They see you're hungry, and they tell you that if you'll fuck, they'll give you a hand. It's a cock those fags want to give you, not a hand!"
"Gay or not, there are pigs everywhere."
"Does it bother you if I say fag? You always say gay..."
"No, I don't give a shit. I don't feel like I'm a fag or gay, I feel like I'm Neil Sawers, full-stop."
"But you said you prefer males, didn't you?"
"And what about it? I'm still Neil Sawers. Do you like beer?"
Norman looked at him, knitting his brows, "Yes... Why?"
"So should I call you alcoholic? Or beer-maniac?"
"OK, I understand. But you are easily offended."
"You would be too if they stuck a label on you. If people talked about you calling you 'you rapist...' would that please you?"
"OK, OK, I get the message... you're right. I just never thought about it like that."
"Let's change the subject, then," Neil said.
For a while they were both silent. Neil went and got more beer.
"Norman, I was thinking... if you'd like, you can stop here for a few days. We could at least spend Christmas day together..."
"Christmas? This will be my first Christmas on my own..."
"I've lost the count of how many I've spent by myself..."
"Christmas, at my home... was perhaps the only pleasant day of the year. Everybody felt they had to be good. Isn't it funny? Yes, we all went to church... and exchanged gifts and had a good lunch. And then... everything went back to normal. Anyway, I always looked forward to Christmas with pleasure and... Alright. But the day after, I'll go. I don't want... Just until Christmas Day, OK?"
"Yes, OK. Tomorrow we'll go and do some shopping. We will fix a Christmas lunch... something special, you'll see. It will be the first Christmas lunch I haven't eaten alone... in years... in years..."
"What's your job?" Norman asked, when he realized that Neil was becoming emotional.
"Office. Computers."
"Good pay?"
"Seventeen thousand a year."
"Not bad."
"After twenty years?"
"I see. Don't you enjoy it?"
"Not very much. And what were you doing, before?"
"Shop assistant. Furniture shop. Nine thousand a year."
"Did you enjoy it?"
"Why don't you have friends?"
"It's possibly my fault. I don't like being... judged. And, you see, I don't fit in with people my own age."
"How old are you?"
"Perhaps double your age? Forty one already."
"I'm twenty-one already. I thought you were younger. And if you looked after yourself, you would look even younger."
"Look after myself? For whom? I did, for him and... for what? It was a waste of time."
"For yourself."
"You think so?"
They became silent again for quite a while. Neil realized that Norman's glass was empty again.
"More beer?" he asked.
No answer.
"Norman? Hey Norman?" Neil called softly. Bending towards the boy, he saw that he had fallen asleep. He stood up and looked at him. Norman was sound asleep, his head back against the armchair, his arms still on the arms of the chair, his legs apart. He observed the boy's face -- his two distinct eyebrows were light brown, long and narrow, well shaped, and they contrasted with his wheat-blond hair. His face was thin and he wore a tired frown. He called him again, softly, two or three times. Then went into his bedroom, got out a soft woollen rug and covered the boy up to his chin. Then he reached out and lightly brushed Norman's cheek, but suddenly pulled his hand back as though he'd burned himself... he must not let himself go, he had to control himself, he must not make the boy uncomfortable.
He switched off the light, turned down the gas in the radiator, went into his bedroom and lay down on his bed, still dressed. He pulled off only his shoes, before pulling the covers over himself and falling asleep almost at once.
He woke up and looked at his watch -- it was nine a.m. He got out of bed and, went into the living room without putting on his shoes, wondering whether he should wake up the boy or let him sleep some more. But the armchair beside the fireplace was empty, the rug was neatly folded over an arm, and the radiator turned off. On the rug was a message written on the back of an empty envelope, "Sorry for the trouble -- Norman."
Neil was disappointed and smiled bitterly at that sentence -- so formal and so brief, in the boy's style. Then he asked himself whether the boy had stolen anything and checked. But nothing was missing -- at first glance everything was exactly as he had left it, and that also meant that the boy hadn't pried into anything.
"Alone again", he thought. "It's useless to delude myself, to dream." But at least the boy had spent one night out of the cold. He went into the bathroom and found the tub and the sink wet, the soap moist, the toothbrush soaking in a still-hot glass of water, and the towels damp. Evidently, Norman had taken a bath and cleaned himself up before leaving. "Yes, he certainly needed a good bath", Neil thought. Who knows why he had left? He had said he would spend the next four days with him...
He washed himself then fixed his own breakfast. The boy hadn't touched anything in the refrigerator either. Evidently he hadn't eaten anything. If he had, Neil wouldn't have been annoyed at all. After breakfast he decided to do some shopping and went to the commercial center. He bought very little; he didn't feel like cooking anything special just for himself. He went back home, switched on the TV and sat on an armchair. But he wasn't paying any attention to the program, he was thinking of Norman. He hadn't seen the boy smile -- not even once -- throughout the previous evening. "It's sad to see a person who never smiles", he thought. The boy appeared to be even lonelier than he was, and loneliness is a sad thing. But evidently two lonely people aren't mutually compatible. He would have liked to help the boy feel a little bit of human warmth, of friendship but, admitting to Norman that he was gay, while the boy was not, had thwarted that. He had been afraid that Norman might mistake an offer of friendship as being a request for sexual contact, so he had offered only beer and a place to sleep, but not friendship.
"Sorry for the trouble..."
No, Neil was the one who was really sorry, because he had lost the chance to spend a different kind of Christmas, less empty than the usual ones. Why had the boy followed him? To talk? Why had he at first accepted the offer to stay until Christmas day but then left? Could he have felt the light caress Neil had given him before going to bed? It seemed impossible; the boy had really been fast asleep. Then he remembered that the boy had taken a bath and he had heard nothing... Who knew what Norman's body looked like? The baggy shirt and jeans hadn't allowed Neil to guess anything. He recalled the boy's jeans, with the two wide, colored bands of trim along the seams at the sides, and his well-shaped feet visible through his sandals. He again saw the boy's tapered hands where the blue lines of his veins stood out neatly on their skinny backs. And his face, a little emaciated -- tired, more from an inner weariness than a physical one. And the crown of soft hair, the color of wheat. Neil saw the hair slightly dirty, flattened -- he imagined what it would look like freshly washed and dried, and in the sunlight? He was sure it would be beautiful. Then, he realized that he didn't know what color Norman's eyes were.
He heard the footsteps of the tenant who lived upstairs and a door closing. A few moments later there was a knock on his door. He went and opened it.
"Oh, Mister Sawers. I wanted to wish you a merry Christmas."
Neil smiled in answer then, seeing the two suitcases beside the girl, he asked, "Are you going to visit your family?"
"Yes, I'll be back on the third of January. This year we have a long vacation, thank goodness. Well, here is the rent for January, anyway."
"There is no hurry, you could have paid me when you got back. Will your friend also be away?"
"Yes. Marlene left yesterday morning and will be back mid-January. She asked for some days of leave, in order to go to Germany and visit her family."
"Have a good holiday, then, and a merry Christmas to you too..."
The girl smiled, nodded, and then went downstairs. Neil closed his door. He opened the envelope and checked the money, then put it in his wallet. In the envelope there was also a Christmas card signed by the two girls, just like the previous year. They were the only Christmas greetings he had received for years...
He wondered whether the girls were just roommates or were having a relationship. Who knows? After all it wasn't his business, but... Jane was very feminine and Marlene something of a tomboy. But this impression could have been created by the fact that she was German. They were office colleagues, both twenty-seven years old. The fact that he had never seen a boy going upstairs to their place didn't automatically mean they didn't have boyfriends. And anyway, it was their business, he reminded himself.
He went downstairs to put the garbage bag in the dustbin, then entered the shop underneath his home. At the counter was one of the manager's three daughters, the middle one -- the least beautiful, although all three were quite pretty. "All half-breeds have something beautiful about them", he thought, "combining the best attributes of both races". Her father was an older black man, his hair already salt and pepper, with more salt than pepper. Their mother had died four years earlier. She had been an Irish woman, somewhat plain, but so cheerful... The couple had really been in love; he remembered well... an odd, but beautiful, couple.
He bought a package of garbage bags, one of toilet paper, a toothbrush and a set of two ceramic ashtrays, and put them all on his account. While he was going back home, he told himself that he had been stupid to buy the ashtrays -- Norman was gone. He had got the idea to buy the ashtrays on the previous evening, when the boy had accepted his offer to stop at his place for a few days, and it had remained in his head on the shopping list. When he got home, he put the box with the two ashtrays just inside one of the kitchen cupboards.
He cooked his lunch, ate it, then washed the dishes and put on the washing machine. He went into the living room, turned on the TV, picked up the novel he was reading, opened it at the bookmarked page, found the last sentence he had read and started reading it again. He stopped only when he heard the signature tune of the 6 p.m. news. There was nothing really new, nothing interesting. He turned off the TV set, put on his padded anorak, made sure that he had the house keys in his pocket, his train pass, and his wallet. He took out the money that was in it, replacing only about thirty pounds, and put the balance in the tin box he kept in his underwear drawer. Then he went out.