Vanished Years by Rupert Everett

Author:Rupert Everett [Everett, Rupert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780748133772
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2012-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Alfo shut the door behind him and leant against it. He didn’t turn on the lights. I stumbled in the dark towards the huge old bed and threw myself down on it, knowing by now that something substantial was about to happen. The springs creaked under my weight. The grainy thick darkness began to subside, a black tide out of which appeared the cupboard, the table, the screen, then Alfo himself, carved in a ghostly light from the street. His eyes were black holes, and the sadness that I had noticed in him at dinner was distilled now that we were back here. A strange feeling of dread surged through my whole body.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he said, but didn’t go on.

After a minute he walked over to the bed and lay down carefully. For a while we just lay there side by side, not moving, not touching, and time stood still. It felt as though the whole room had turned in on us. The furniture watched, the bed cradled us with tenderness, and the universe held its breath until, almost imperceptibly at first, Alfo began to shake. He held his hand over his brow, as if that gesture might somehow quell the storm rising inside, but with a sudden gasp tears began to pour down his face, dripping off his long lashes onto the pillow. Then he cried and cried, with great heaving sobs. Sometimes he tried to speak but he couldn’t and anyway he didn’t really need to, because I knew what he was going to say. So I cried too. At first for him, then for us, and finally, as the full implication of this wordless confession settled, for myself. For some reason I remembered a line from a play in Glasgow, badly delivered by an overweight cockney ham.

‘See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.’

Later Alfo switched on the bedside lamp. It had a medium’s shade with tassels. Estranged by the light, we tried to talk, but there weren’t any words to express the sorrow and anxiety, the guilt and fear of one man telling another that he harbours a killer virus. He knew what it would mean to me. I knew what it already meant to him, and I fought the desire to get up, then and there, and run. Alfo caught the mad glint in my eyes and asked if I wanted to go to a hotel. We were stripped of all artifice and there were no more secrets. In the pool of light from the medium’s lamp, he was vulnerable, beautiful, simple, living and dying in the same breath, and I couldn’t answer. So we just looked at each other and he smiled. Suddenly, without warning, we were in love and everything fell away. A door opened in space. He held out his hand to help me through. I hesitated. I always do.

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