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First of the Angry Young Men
It wasn’t lost on me, the cosmic joke that your flat was on Gallows Hill and the house I shared with my man was behind the old prison. I’d run back there in the morning from the thousand tiny deaths I’d died in your arms the night before. Reprieved, resurrected and sent back to my cell to wait out another day. The legends said there were tunnels under the city. A tunnel from your home to mine for the prisoners to scurry along, safe from the lynch mob above. I could have done with that tunnel. Mostly it was just the milkman winking, but I lived in fear of seeing someone I knew or worse – seeing one of my tutors, or seeing your missus in tears. There was never any sneaking away. The dogs’ home at the bottom of your street would set up howling as I tiptoed past and the workmen in the caff would look up and nudge each other at the grinning girl stumbling down the pavement, carrying her shoes. It would have been easier to stay the night and say I’d been at a friends but that wasn’t how it worked. Staying the night would break the rules and stop it being a game. I’d always slipped out by five a.m.
You should have been a one night stand. Sharp cheekbones and sharper teeth. I should never have gone back. You weren’t like the others though. You had fought Death. I was impressed. I was the only person you didn’t lie to about your scar. You told people you’d been knifed in a mugging. You told people you’d had to climb out of a crashed car. You told people that you’d been savaged by a bear. Anything but the truth, which was they cut you open to make you better, but it might not last. Death could come sneaking back more stealthily than I ever snuck away.
When I first met you the line across your belly was so red and angry I was terrified. I stopped fiddling with your belt and looked at you. “Can you fuck?” I asked. “Can Ah fuck,” you replied, pleased with your joke. But you could fuck and you did fuck and we did fuck all through autumn and spring too. You wouldn’t fuck your girlfriend but you’d fuck me. “Just like the Mafiosi,” I said to the raised eyebrows of my girlfriends. “She’s too special to him. Too pure. I’m the one he can’t resist.” They raised their eyebrows higher and eventually stopped talking to me altogether. You were an angry man, much given to cornering them on the dance floor and demanding to see me. They were terrified of you.
But I wasn’t scared. How could I be scared of a boy I’d seen sobbing and frightened and afraid he was about to die? How could I be scared when you called me around with a takeaway the first time you were well enough to eat proper food again? I could never be scared of you, no matter how much you raged and fought and kicked down fences. I was scared you’d make yourself ill, and scared you would stop wanting to see me but I was never scared of you. The only thing you bloodied your knuckles up on was brick walls.
All autumn and all spring. There is never a winter or a summer in a university town, and especially not in ours. The rain came down and blurred any line between the seasons. The rain came down. It was a strange time. Most of England lay underwater. It was difficult to get out of the city, trapped as we were right in the middle. The only time it didn’t rain was when I wanted it to the most, on those walks back home just before dawn. I’d lean my forehead against lampposts trying to get my breath. The sky should have been sobbing and so should I. How could I when I was grinning so hard I had to put my hands over my mouth to hide my smile? The wind would blow through my hair and ice up my skin. That’s how I’d slip back in the bed. Icy cold. Did he know where I’d been? I expect so.
You thought that’s how I was. Northern, like you. Tough, like you. I was once. I had been. Then I met the man I loved and his Southern heat melted all the ice off my heart and left it soft to the touch. When you squeezed it, it bruised. It hurt. I waited til your angry red line was just a silver mark. Your scar was fading away, as mine was just forming. I ran my fingers up and down it and looked at you, all healed up.
“Will it come back?”
“Let it. I’m ready for it.”
A pause.
“I’m leaving.”
“Aye.”
“You’ll be alright?”
“Aye.”
I never went back. I didn’t see you for a term or two. The last time I saw you you were in ruddy good health. You were fatter and pinker, like you’d been reborn, which I suppose you had. We sat outside in the beer garden, in the rain and talked and talked. It surprised me to realise I’d been in love with you, and it surprised me to realise I wasn’t any more. You had your hand up my skirt the whole time, with your thumb resting by the elastic of my knickers. One of my old friends caught sight of us from the doorway and sneered her disgust. You winked at her. She stalked back inside.
You were going to go back North. I had my sights firmly set on the South. There was nothing between us any more. It had all been washed away with the rain. When I heard you were back in hospital a couple of years later I was surprised you’d stayed in town. I was relieved I’d escaped. I never found out if you got better, but I don’t believe for one second you would have let Death get one over on you. I can’t believe that. I think about you from time to time. Fondly, but without desire. I’m still a sucker for scars though. Mine are invisible, you see.
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