The skies were as dark and as turbulent as a stormy sea, rolling in across the heavens like smoke to invade the twin towns and darken every inch of them with a greyness that could only be an English September. Between skyline and shelf cloud, a white strip smeared to resemble a mountainous mound of snow on the horizon. When an encouraging blast of an unsympathetic whistle sounded in the distance like a canon blast to signal that the rugby match had ended, evacuating black clouds of birds from trees and telephone wires like flecks of soot and ash, thunder shattered the skies to leak rainfall.
'He slept naked in your bed!' Iggy screeched suddenly, opening a blue umbrella overhead that was large enough to shelter a family of four.
Finally. There it is, Charlie thought, as they exited the Theatre Royal after watching Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back for the umpteenth time. He quietly replied, 'He didn't sleep in my bed; he just got into it to hide. And he was only partially nude.'
'Oh, forgive me for focusing on such an unimportant element to the story! I swear, the way you say it.' Iggy gripped the umbrella tightly in two hands once torrential rain pitter-pattered against the canopy, sidestepping puddles that rivered into gutters as he hopped onto the kerb. 'Regardless of his being slightly naked or somewhat clothed, any situation that involves you having Frankie Carrozza in your bed all of a sudden is still like finding hen's teeth.'
Careful to keep under shelter, Charlie raked his teeth over his bottom lip. 'I can't explain it to you properly, or describe him to a satisfactory standard; he doesn't ever sound correctly done when put into words. It wasn't like how you're picturing it. It seemed sort of ... natural, somehow.'
'Natural?' Iggy laughed, tilting the umbrella over Charlie's head. 'I'd consider the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to be more natural than this supernatural event.'
'I know that it sounds ridiculous, but it is what it is. And it is Frankie Carrozza. His nature, which, yes, seemed almost supernaturally natural, doesn't have to match either of ours or that of anyone else's. Wasn't it you who had said that he does what he wants whenever he wants with whatever he wants?'
Dubious, Iggy asked, 'Mightn't you have been—'
'Mightn't I have been what?' Charlie snapped.
'—dreaming?'
'You don't believe me.' The jagged words stung his heart to bloom fury there, hot enough to scorch his lungs and throat like fire so that he was unable to speak for a moment. Although cold hurt glazed his belly, Charlie could see why it would seem unbelievable. Even he had woke doubtful that morning, but he'd been quickly assured that it hadn't all been a vivid dream when he found pennies in his sheets and on the dresser that had spilled from Carrozza's pockets the night before. However, stubborn to the bone, Charlie was much too angry with him to admit that he agreed. 'A dream. Is it really so difficult to imagine that he might actually want to be my friend? Am I honestly that repulsive or uninteresting, or is it that I'm just not good enough? I'll tell you something, Iggy Perkins, I'll tell it to you now and only the once, a philosophy I ought to live by: if anybody can do it, then why not me?'
'Listen, Charlie—'
'The terrible thing about it is that had it been the other way around, had you told me this, Iggy, I'd have believed you in less than half a heartbeat. Without question.' Charlie abruptly stopped, and raindrops bounced off his head. 'You know what, on second thought, I don't think I want to walk back to Baldwin's Bec with you right now, as you're being a complete and utter arse!'
Aghast, Iggy spluttered words, until he sourly said, 'Fine by me!'
'Fine!' Charlie shouted back, shoving passed him brusquely. 'Do you want your knife back?'
'Oh, grow up, Charlie!' Iggy sighed, shaking excess water off the umbrella.
'Oh, f'—a car backfired—'uck off, Iggy.'
Once he'd stooped under an entry to get in out of the rain, Charlie lit a cigarette and watched Iggy sidle on up the road alone. He glanced back every ten feet, but Charlie refused to acknowledge him.
'Priggish Perkins,' he muttered, sneering in his direction and shuddering in the cold.
Lightning flashed and thunder roared.
'For God's sake, you can't get away with this every single time!' cried the sports coach, jogging down Pococks Lane with a clipboard held above his head. 'If you wanted to be at the try-outs for the cross-country relay race, then you shouldn't have sauntered in late! It's as simple as that, Carrozza!'
'Sir, gimme a'—he spotted Charlie, mouth opening into a wide smile—'Chance!'
Assuming that he'd already successfully charmed the sports coach into giving him a position on the team, he continued running through the rain until he stopped outside Charlie's shelter, a hand clutching a stitch in his side and his cheeks as red as apples.
'And for the last time, Carrozza,' barked the sports coach, throwing his arms up in defeat as he walked back towards his vehicle, 'BUY A GODDAM WATCH!'
For a few minutes, the two boys didn't speak as they stared at each other; Frankie lit a cigarette, chewing on smoke as he held it up to his lips between his middle finger and thumb; and Charlie moved aside to make room for him out of the rain, watching the mud slid off his shins in the downpour.
Once he finished his cigarette, Frankie finally said, 'You're soaked to the bone, old fellow. Why aren't you inside?'
Charlie only shrugged, watching the pitched cigarette spraying sparks across the street until it sizzled out in a drain.
Sensing his reluctance to return to Baldwin's Bec, he asked him, 'Do you want to come with me to the empyrean? I promise not to accost you, and will only ever treat you like a gentleman. You've shown me yours, so it's only fair that I show you mine. It is, after all, the gentlemanly thing to do now that we're friends.'
Aware of Iggy's eyes in the window yonder, Charlie said, 'Sure.'
Braving the winds and rain, they moseyed over Windsor Bridge and discussed Charlie's upcoming extra work—to see where Frankie could give guidance, as he was two years ahead of him. The furthest Oppidan known to the school, Frankie was the only Etonian to live off campus in Windsor and the only one to not live in an Oppidan house: he resided in Empyreal House, a loft hidden down a cobbled alleyway halfway down Imperial Boulevard.
As they exited the alley to wander a courtyard underneath naked lightbulbs dangling from ropes, Charlie murmured, 'You must be out a fortune on electricity.'
'You know what's excellent about such expenditure?' he replied, leading them up spiralling cast-iron stairs that he'd ensnared with fairy lights. 'A fortune that isn't mine to appease it with.'
Whilst Frankie used his key to unlock the studio apartment, Charlie gripped the railing and overlooked the gardens below, feeling as though he was overhanging the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Eyes disengaging from the large yew tree infesting a corner, he thought of the Bridge of Sighs, and remembered that the garth of Empyreal House was rumoured to be named the Moat of Moans.
'Sorry for the mess,' Carrozza said once they entered his tabernacle, quickly scraping up a jumper and firing it towards a wardrobe; there was no other single shred of evidence that leant towards untidiness by any means.
Inside the loft, the urban red brick walls of New York clashed with London's classic deep red leather seats and dark wooden furniture. Between the bare brick and bookcases, wide windows drenched the dark floorboards and large red-and-green embroidered carpets with the colours of eventide. Beaming at all the trinkets, road signs, pub plaques, and license plates that cluttered the walls and shelves, Charlie quickly turned towards Frankie, fearing he was prying into his den, but the boy was busy emptying his satchel full of trophies, gifts, and favours given to him that day like rent into a trunk.
'Do you mind if I leave you alone for a few minutes?' Carrozza asked, gesturing to his muddy jersey and shorts. 'I need to shower all this muck off.'
'You do what you need to do.' He grinned. 'I'll be alright.'
'I'd be careful with giving away that sort of permission so freely if I were you.' Frankie winked, throwing a towel towards Charlie for him to dry himself with it. 'If you'd like, you can make yourself some tea and change into some of my clothes to warm yourself up. Mi casa es su casa! Or feel free to join me if you want to shower off that shower of rain. You scrub my back, I'll scrub yours.'
Near tempted by the joke, Charlie's eyes followed Frankie as he marched towards an en-suite bathroom, slipping off his grimy shirt and shorts as he went to expose grass-stained shoulders and thighs. Taking a hitched, laboured breath, Charlie crossed the wide breadth of the museum dedicated to Carrozza, where all the signs of his marvellous wonders sat to gather dust. He manoeuvred around books carelessly stacked like skyscrapers—a literary cityscape of horror, thriller, and detective novels, banned books, leather-bound classics, and revolutionary and rebellious publications written by the Beat Generation—and large flags (a Union Jack and the tricolours of Italy and Ireland) that were used as curtains, to peek inside trunks and portmanteaus. Feeling like a stowaway from the distant shores who'd uncovered a buccaneer's trinkets and treasures, he opened chests to discover odd choices for gifts from his admirers: metallic toy soldiers, collectable models of vehicles, ornamental daggers, letter openers, a stuffed kestrel, a blue toy police box, bags upon netted bags of marbles, conkers, decorative owls, glass butterflies, a Viking helmet, a musket, ornaments, candleholders, flasks, vintage wines, and a hundred other antiques. Magazines on engines, melting glass, sports, and origami were sprawled across the dining table beside ten port-stained wineglasses and a bong, each of the wingback chairs carelessly pushed back. On the other side of the the conference table rose a large fireplace, and between were two red leather sofas that faced each other on either side of a coffee table, where he smelled hints of Seraphina Rose's perfume lingering on the pillows. Empyreal House was Frankie Carrozza's mind laid bear and cluttered in an open space, displaying particles of his soul in the same manner as his tattoos.
'They say you stay here for a pittance,' Charlie called, hearing Frankie's body interrupting the running water. He touched dustless shelves choked with vinyls and tapes, then moved his hand over the Walkman and turntable. 'We always wondered why you were allowed to stay in your own place outside of Eton alone ... like Frankenstein's monster.'
'Not for a pittance,' came his reply from the bathroom. 'With Margo, but it's all a ruse: she's never ever here.'
On the wall was a large painting of a boy twirling a girl with hair the colour of conkers and chestnuts and autumn inside a field, both frozen in time on a summer-worthy day and far from the maddening crowd jiving around the maypole. He had no doubt that the youth in the straw hat and trouser braces was Frankie—beige skin, golden brown waves of hair, and winter-red cheeks spoke volumnes—but he did not recognise the girl. He wondered if she was his sister, but she did not have his emerald eyes. Since countrymen speak fables of their kings, emperors, rajahs, kaisers, khans, overlords, sultans, caesars, and ministers, it was difficult to decipher truth from fiction. He might've heard whispers of older Carrozza siblings, but the girl seemingly shared his age in the artwork. Alas, beyond the loyal company he kept, nobody else truly knew Carrozza all that well within and without Eton. And despite being a gossipmonger, due to her devotion to him, Seraphina Rose never gossiped about Frankie Carrozza. It seemed almost unimaginable that Frankie could've spawned from anything as mundane as a family, to have parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents that he'd inherited characteristics from, but rather had hatched or grown as something mystical, birthed from folklore among the toadstools in the woodland like a divine, immaculate, and mystical conception. In addition to this, there were three large paintings in gold frames that depicted the story of Achilles and Patroclus from The Iliad, perceived by many a historian as a doomed love affair. As Charlie admired the three pieces of art above the escritoire, he now found that difficult to discredit. One was by Nikolai Ge, a Russian realist, and another by Gavin Hamilton, both works romanticising the same theme: Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus. Both painted the two boys scantily clad, one in the throes of life and the other in sleepy death, as Achilles cradled his faithful companion. The third painting was by an artist named Joseph-Benoît Suvée, and he had the hero adorned in his gloriously gilded armour and a flowing scarlet cape, gold that was as bright as the sun and cloth that was as red as his blood. It showed Achilles stealing away to Patroclus' deathbed to deposit the murdered corpse of murderous Hector at the feet of his abandoned body—to either bargain for his soul's return with it or to show his dearest that he'd claimed his revenge against the man who'd dared take him from him. Although each was a stunning masterpiece, Charlie felt they poisoned him with malaise if he was to stare at them for too long. Laying his hands on an upright piano with beautifully intricate designs, a walnut case inlaid with Grecian folk, angels playing musical instruments, and hankering demons, his eyes were drawn to a framed fresco by Masaccio that detailed Adam and Eve's removal in the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. All of the paintings were hung over a toile-patterned beige patch of wallpaper that was full of figless Roman males splashing in bathhouses, pagan boys full of effrontery as they played in fields behind churches, and cherubs claimed by demons in the meadows.
How curious, Charlie mused, eyeing one bookcase by the bed. It was empty of books, but full of personalised snow globes with names scratched into them.
The first shelf contained four of the ornaments: Thomas' snowglobe, which had brothers hopping a brook. Marigold's, which was a sister consoling and reading to a younger sibling. Elena's, which was a mother cradling a child. And Alex's, which was a father leading his son by the hand.
The second shelf had four, too: Frankie's, which had a crown on a bed of treasure to personify life. Beth's, which was a churched marbled with winter to represent religion. Seraphina's, which was a rose encased in a diamond-shaped globe to symbolise beauty. And Trevor's, which had a snowy graveyard resting on a skull to showcase death.
The third shelf had eight smaller globes with eight various hearts: a knight for Buckley, a shamrock for Quinn, black and white chessmen for the Valentine twins, a canvas and stand for Giles, a raven for Carlyle, a pulpit for Brooks-Humphrey, a solemn statue for Emmerich, and a compass for Jones.
As he studied one on the next shelf that had an aeroplane for Georgia, he realised that just as he gathered last words, Frankie seemly collected people by snow globes that represented how he saw them.
After his attempts to light a fire had failed, Charlie returned to sit on the edge of the king-sized bed. Looking from the open bathroom door, where Frankie's voice drifted from ('And I think,' he sung, 'James Dean, he could have loved a boy like him!'), towards the wall opposite, his eyes rose above the cabinet, waist-level drawers, the sixteenth-century Italian globe bar, and the large viridian mermaid statue with mint-coloured hair and a crystallised crown clustered with multicoloured seashells and jewellery, to set his sight on Carrozza's pride and joy: a framed map of the world. Sliding up on the bed, Charlie set aside On The Road by Jack Kerouac, which Frankie had bookmarked with a laminated King of Hearts card, and studied the large map. The pathfinder had connected a path along the long and open road he planned to take with brass pins and coloured threads. Eyeing England, the starting point that he'd marked out with a little red Volkswagen camper van, Charlie envisioned Frankie late at night, iridescent in the light of the stained-glass lampshade below, compelled by dromomania, and much too lost to wanderlust to sleep as he busied himself with dreams of travelling the whole of the world.
'Sorry for keeping you, old fellow.' Working his arms like piston rods and swinging his hips like a Brazilian, Frankie danced out of the bathroom, lighting a certain spark of life back into the mahogany room again like flame to a wick.
Setting his book aside, Charlie lifted his head and said, 'It's fine, really.'
'I thought I told you to make yourself more comfortable, Charles?' Frankie demanded in faux sternness, hands resting on the hips of raggedy long johns. 'You must be freezing in that damp wear.'
'I tried to light a fire, rather unsuccessfully.'
'Come, I'll show you.' Frankie lead him to the fireplace, and it roared warmth minutes later. 'Arms up!'
Charlie's eyes widened a fraction with surprise when Frankie abruptly tugged the hem of his blue Fair Isle jumper up and over his head. Once he'd draped it over the fireguard to dry, he towelled his own hair and then Charlie's.
'What are you doing?' He laughed, face hidden behind the fabric rubbing aggressively into his head as he tried to rest fingers on his wrists.
'Would you rather I dried it with my feet?' said he, hanging the towel alongside Charlie's jumper. Wiping his hands down on the raglan sleeves of his tatty baseball shirt that promoted Iron Maiden's Killers album, he then tried to fix Charlie's hair. Flashing the soles of his white tube socks, Frankie bounded off to rifle through his vinyl shelves and the globe bar. When "Dream On" by Aerosmith started to play on the turntable, he returned to set two tumblers, port, schnapps, cider, whiskey, and several glass bottles of Coca Cola and sarsaparilla on the coffee table. Gesturing to the red leather sofa as he sat on the one opposite, he added, 'Sit, and choose your poison.'
Maybe you, Charlie thought, but he jokingly said, 'A splash of port, please.'
From a drawer in the table, Frankie produced an ashtray, a carton of cigarettes, and three fat spliffs that he'd forged into a crucifix. Behind him, his wall of windows leaked the light of a dying sun, blazing dull orange as it sunk beneath the skyline. Soon, darkness would kill it for the day, and its silvery ghost would reemerge to trickle moonlight—or so Charlie had once believed was what happened when he was a child. As the stained-glass lampshade between them dashed misshapen technicolour squares cross their features, Charlie watched Frankie as he uncapped the glass bottle.
'If we want to swiftly avoid any unnecessary awkwardness revolving around things we've left unspoken before cementing this friendship, we must first loosen our hearts and our tongues.' Frankie clinked his glass against Charlie's and quoted Quinn: 'Sláinte mhaith!'
'I once knew of a clever toast, but now I cannot think it,' said Charlie, raising his tumblr to his lips. 'So, fill our glass with anything, and damn our souls, but I'll drink it.'
'Here's to the roses and lilies in bloom, you in my arms and I in your room. A door that is locked, a key that is lost, a bird, and a bottle, and a bed badly tossed, and a night that is fifty years long.' With a hand to his wind-tossed waves of hair, a matching black strip of thick fabric used as a headband to contain the wild bramble, Frankie drained the contents of his glass and licked his wet crimson mouth.
Charlie pursued, pouring the drink down his throat until he coughed and spluttered somewhat once he felt the bitter bite of the aftertaste burn along his oesophagus.
Two more measures were poured.
After he'd taken the needle off the turntable to play Simon and Garfunkel on the jukebox, Carrozza put the spliff to his lips and struck a match. Placing the greedy flame to the tips, he puffed several times. Inhaling deeply, he then exhaled a train's worth of steam.
Gazing through the dispersing smoke, glowing pinkly from the neon signs hung on the walls, Frankie asked him, 'Have you ever done blowbacks?'
'What sort of boy do you take me for, Carrozza?' He squinted at him jokingly.
'I haven't taken you at all—yet.' Frankie chuckled, leaning forward to rest elbows on his knees. 'Shut up and c'mere to me.'
Charlie rose eagerly to mimic Carrozza, who'd pushed the coffee table aside so that he could kneel before Chance like a clergy before the alter. He patiently waited as the other boy drew in deeply on the cannabis, embers scorching the paper like a cartoonish fuse. Storing the smoke in his lungs, Frankie set the spliff on the ashtray and signalled for Charlie to cup his hands around his mouth. When Frankie nudged his own mouth into the gap between his cupped hands, Charlie felt Carrozza's fingers lightly touch the base of his neck to bring him closer and the top of his thigh to steady himself. As he blew out the smoke, green eyes fixated on blue ones, Charlie breathed it in, shoulders softly shuddering from each point of contact. Frankie fell back to sit on his heels, his fingertips grazing his earlobe and collar as they slipped passed. Seconds later, he parted his amused lips to breath the smoke back in when Charlie exhaled it directly into his face again. The hazy room was full of perverted experiences that sloughed his innocent skin. When his head started to float towards the neon lights above and his body slumped like an anchor to sink into the red leather beneath, Simon and Garfunkel warbling repeatedly on the jukebox yonder, Charlie was struck with misplaced nostalgia over moments he never experienced with people he never knew. Briefly considering the years ahead, he wondered if they were attaching soon-to-be aching memories to prettier songs, perhaps.
Passing the spliff back and forth, they refilled their drinks, knocked their glasses together to slosh alcohol around themselves as they heartily bellowed toasts, and cried from laughter like hysterical children up passed their bedtime over the tale of Sebastian Sinclair and Boyd Boyle. The story goes that Sinclair, a martial artist enthusiast, was challenged by Boyle, a budding fencer, to a duel near Pococks Lane. Many agreed that it came about due to sheer confidence on Boyle's behalf rather than sportsmanship as he was so tall and Sinclair so small. Sebastian had instantly knocked Boyle unconscious for thirty minutes with a kick to the head. Galvanised by a modest crowd cheering admiration, their crowned champion had taken up his adversary's sabre spiritedly and hurled it like a spear as only an Olympian champion could, his rowdy battlecry dying abruptly in his mouth seconds later when the sword dropped at his feet from having pierced through the chest of a kestrel. The flightlessness invoked a mixed response from the audience: the faint-hearted screamed, the cruel laughed, but all had scampered across the fields in alarm, leaving Boyd to wake alone to an unsettling scene that he took as a message from Sinclair.
'When you laugh! Oh, when you laugh that giddy laugh! To hear it as soon as I wake in the morning; I'd blast the birds each dawn for daring to drown you out with their song!' Frankie howled with mirth, clutching his belly as he rolled back and forth on the sofa opposite. When he finally composed himself, he wiped his eyes on his sleeves and lit a cigarette to contribute to the druggy haze choking the room. 'What is it you want to be, Charlie boy, when you grow up and leave these stony walls behind?'
'A writer, I think.' Although euphoric, he spilled some liquid over himself from the shock of how easily he'd confessed his sincerest truth. 'Then again, maybe being an author falls along the same lines of wishing to be an astronaut. Perhaps I'll be a teacher.'
'What's stopping you from being an astronaut aside from the distance between you and the stars? No, but honestly? That makes for quite the change to the answers I usually receive—stockbrokers, proprietors, accountants, politicians, executives, marketers, members of parliament, jockeys, golfers, doctors, physicians, philosophers, barristers, bankers, and bores. You, you would be remarkable.'
Charlie shrugged and sipped his drink. Rhetorically, he asked, 'Yes, but what makes my words worthy of being heard?'
'But I like your words, no matter if they're spoken aloud rather than immortalised on paper.'
When Charlie's cheeks threatened to redden, he took another long gulp of bitter bourbon to hide his face behind the tumbler. When the aftertaste smoothened, he asked, 'Tell me more about some of your favourite words.'
'Aha! You're in luck, as I've just the one for you; I've been attempting to translate "Two Loves" into Latin recently, you see.' Pushing aside books on Marcel Proust and Latin lexicons, Frankie lit a cigarette and read Lord Alfred Douglas's poem aloud:
'I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's wilful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one's brief moment in the sunset; blades
Of grass that in a hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall, o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, "Sweet friend,
Come, I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end."
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, overwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, "Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?" He said, "My name is Love."
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, "He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame."
Then sighing, said the other, "Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name."'
'Beautiful,' Charlie whispered.
'Yes,' Frankie agreed. After he had stared at him for a moment without speaking, he asked, 'And your parents, what do they want you to be?'
'Whatever my heart desires.'
'Siblings?'
'Inexistent. It's just me.'
'Ah, you must be terribly spoiled then; very few times have I heard of parents allowing their child to follow the whims of their mercurial hearts.'
'Not exactly.' Charlie shrugged. 'I suppose they supply me with whatever it is I require and more, but fail to administer affection properly.'
Frankie's mouth formed into a perfect circle. 'I'm sorry to hear, old fellow.'
'Don't be.' Touched by his concern, Charlie quickly added, 'Honestly, it's fine. More oft than not, everyone is somewhat fond of their creation, and automatically imprint their own unique version of love upon it. Against their wishes, I believe, my parents accomplished what society expected of them: they produced a child to mark their marriage. Don't misunderstand me: it isn't that they dislike or regret me at all, it's just that I was never intended for either of their lifestyles, and only something that was needed rather than wanted. To never have a child pitter-pattering around the house, what would the neighbours say? Although silently glad of one another's ongoing existence, we never get involved in each other's lives. We sit at the table to have breakfast and talk sometimes, but never really say anything beyond the surface. I think we've forgotten how to along the way. It's as though we're an advertisement made to look like a family to sell it from afar, but when the lights go out, when the cues end, when the roles are unnecessary, we depart the stage through separate wings. It doesn't bother me much, as I've become accustomed to it now.'
'Which might be the tragic thing about it,' said Frankie, offering him a cigarette.
Charlie lit it and drew in deep. 'Aside from supplying me with sustenance and an education, I don't particularly believe they knew what else to do with me once I began to speak. They're not sentimental folk. Mind you, they enjoy retelling the story of my first word to friends at dinner parties—to brag, to relate, or to drown out stories of other children that they're sick and tired of hearing about? I don't know exactly. But a rather obstreperous owl had moved into the tree outside my nursery window and hooted loudly every single night, and that is how "who" became my first word. I believe their guidance could only extend so far, and so when I excelled that, when I needed to learn from them about things beyond common capabilities, they only truly knew how to keep me alive.'
'There is something very sad about that.' Frankie lit his own cigarette.
'What about you?' Charlie shrugged his shoulders, averting his eyes as he took another long sip. 'Any siblings?'
Frankie took a deep gulp and smacked his lips. Once he'd set the tumblr aside, he said, 'One or two.'
'What are Mr and Mrs Carrozza like?'
'Painfully overbearing, and so we revolt.
'"We"?'
'Marigold, my older sister. Margo is currently surfing the second-wave feminism. Although a certified bohemian Buddhist, she's currently studying Theology, Religion, and the Philosophy of Religion under the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge. She once wanted to run off to become a stewardess, but she's let that dream fly away with every departing aircraft since. It's only recently that my mother is finally proud enough to allow her to attend her soirées, galas, and garden parties as she's less likely to cause a scene with the naturally rebellious flare she'd inherited. Last I heard, she was surfing somewhere in Asia to protest against dolphin drive hunting.'
'What do you want to do once you've left Eton?' Glancing towards the map, Charlie gestured to it with his tumbler. 'Travel, I see.'
'With all my heart,' he answered gruffly, smoke still held in his breast as he passed the spliff to Charlie. 'I long to see the world. I want to meet funny characters at funnier times, eat strange food in stranger places, and make merrier memories than the merriest ones I've made. And as I'm leaving, and this gloomy old island slips away from beneath my toes, I'll be listening to "Come Sail Away" by Styx, and the words will know me as well as I know them when I set off to become one of them—one of those adventurous sort. I plan to see it all, where nobody has ever seen me. I want to see young dawns, swim old seas, and mark every road with my footprint—just me, a rucksack on my back, the ancient stars above, and the old open road below. See, the world is a vast book to read, and England is but a chapter.'
As Charlie's eyes travelled across the world via multicoloured threads, he whispered, 'It would be something, wouldn't it?'
'My itinerary broadens every day: I'll cross the Scottish Highlands. I'll breathe in the west coast of Ireland. I'll swim the Cornish seas. I'll wander the French vinyards. I'll float in the fjords of Norway. I'll run green Swedish fields. I'll walk the forests of Finland. I'll set sail on the Baltic Sea. I'll brave a Russian winter. I'll visit the Italian village that bore my family. I'll light Hungarian lanterns. I'll feel the Spanish sunshine on my face. I'll conquer the Great Wall of China. I'll walk the road that leads to Rome. And I'll answer the call of the Californian coastline.' Frankie sucked in deep on the spliff, eyes alit with dromomania. Voice deepened by holding smoke in his lungs, he muttered, 'Then next: Argentina, Morocco, Australia, Venezuela. I'll consider wherever—everywhere! Just have it be anywhere but here.'
'It sounds like quite the odyssey.' Charlie sighed.
In the silence that followed, Frankie watched him for a long moment, his eyes squinted and his lips stretched thin to form a wonderfully wistful smile, looking at him as though he didn't quite believe what he'd just heard and found it comical, all the whilst mulling over an equation.
'It sounds like you long for it, too,' Carrozza finally said. 'So come with me, then.'
Swaying drunkenly, Charlie's head snapped back. 'Come again?'
'You're getting ahead of yourself.' The tip of his tongue pierced through the teeth of a cheeky grin. 'To me, it sounds like a passion we share. To me, it sounded like a request you wanted to hear.'
'I—I was misconstrued.'
'Then, by all means'—he offered him the floor by sweeping his hand through the space between them—'construe.'
'It sounds heavenly, but I cannot steal your dreams from you.'
'Quite the contrary, I've been looking for a partner, someone to share in adventure with.' Frankie confessed. 'In saying that, when I go off on this epic journey, come along with me. You and I and the great beyond. Next stop: anywhere and everywhere.'
Charlie's heart and eyes lit with drunken possibilities, enthusiasm stirring in them both that had been inspired by the alcohol intake and drowned doubts of a promise that may be dead before dawn, a charge igniting in them both that might force them to take off on the run together that very night. 'If you insist. If you're absolutely sure.'
'I insist. I'm absolutely sure. I'm never sure why in the beginning, but I'm always sure of who: those who fascinate me. Splendid! That's that sorted, so let's drink to it!' Frankie clapped, then clinked his tumbler against Charlie's to toast the dream and seal the swear. 'It's very decent of you. You'll be happy to know that this means you won't suddenly find yourself waking up in Krakow one day against your will. Furthermore, it'll give you something to write about when you help me figure a way out of those misadventures full of nasty characters and mad charades that I apparently tend to stumble into every summer. Adventures that serve to aggrandise the Frankish dynasty. Now, promise—just to be sure.'
'Promise,' Charlie vowed, no matter the morn. After a moment, he said, 'They do say an awful lot of exaggerated—yet, extraordinary—things about you, Frankie Carrozza, the emperor of an Eton empire as grand as the Frankish dynasty.'
'Chance, you have a choice: you could spend the night with me telling you ostensible and rodomontading tales of days bygone, ones about copulating with spies and immortal boys, or we could write our very own rather interesting story together ourselves.'
When the fire shrunk to hot coals, Charlie took his jumper from the fireguard and put it back on. As he soared skyward into surreality on the back of illicit substances, his cheeks flushed with warmth and mirth, he crossed to Frankie's bed and began to inspect it. Without giving it much thought, he followed the frame to the headboard, and then dropped down. Just as intoxicated and as curious, he became aware of Frankie watching him as he slid halfway under it. He was scanning the boards underneath when he felt strong hands trail him out from under the bed again by the hips. Carrozza towered over him, swamping him with his shadow like a handsome gargoyle.
'What are you doing?' he demanded amusedly.
'I expected notches on your bedpost like a cat's scratching post,' he answered mid-laughter, 'but it's immaculate!'
'You idiot!' Frankie sniggered, causing Charlie to laugh harder. When a full minute had passed, his grin died very slowly once his eyes intensified. Deliberation returned to his face again, as though he was wrestling with a troubling decision. One hand still rested on Charlie's hip, whilst the other clutched the side of the bed to steady his awkward crouch. When he used it to lift The House at Pooh Corner off the bedspread, he asked, 'Mightn't you be a little too old for this book?'
Much too faraway to feel shame, Charlie replied, 'How so, when it's written with words much, much older than you or I? It isn't only photographs that deliver you to memories of days bygone. To tell you the truth, when I do reread old parables from childhood, I find that there's a rather bittersweet, melancholic, and nostalgic essence to them that I both crave for remembrance and hate when it darkens me so. Such as the likes found in that book. You see, one of the final chapters ends bathed in a beautiful sunset on the last day of summer on a Sunday—or, rather, so I believe, to the best of my knowledge. As they potter about doing nothing, Christopher Robin tells Pooh that he is leaving the Hundred Acre Wood for good, to go off to school in the coming morn—or so I believe that that is where he's bound for. Rather delicately, he explains to his friend that he mightn't ever return again because ... well, quite terribly and tragically, because he is growing up. And poor Christopher says, "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." And so Pooh promises, but I'll forever wonder whatever became of Christopher Robin? What did he go off and do with his life? Was he happy, as happy as he was as a boy? And did he ever see those dear old friends of his again? It saddens me so to never know what happens beyond the final chapter. Alas, all stories have a last page bound in a back cover that we're all fated to greet.'
'You say that like they're coffins.'
'Perhaps, Frankie, in a way they are.'
'That is very macabre thinking.'
'Why must it be so, when the contents once made us feel so very happy if only for just a moment?' he whispered.
As they stared at one another, Charlie could almost hear the very air between them suddenly snap and crackle with static and electricity, and he felt the ignition as profoundly as the wood feels the flame when the match is lit. Everyone sensed The Moment before a kiss. As his chest swelled with a plethora of emotions, he almost fell in love at that very second with a simple look: Frankie's endearment. No other human on earth had ever regarded Charlie in such a way before, a look so foreign to him that he couldn't quite find the correct words to describe it. As he thought of what songstresses and bards might sing and say in sonnets, he felt his heart blush with warmth like his whiskey-flushed cheeks. Frankie laughed aloud; it was not one out of spite, but of wistfulness. As he eyed the handsome rabble-rouser through splashes of colours dashed across their features from the stained-glass lampshade, soaking them in crown yellow, Frankie green, carnelian red, and royal blue, he felt as though he'd found the treasurable end of the rainbow and its pot of gold so desperately sought. He wondered if Frankie felt so, too. Charmed, Charlie observed the other boy, focusing on lips that glistened crimson like raspberries, cheeks filled with rich ruby blood, skin as beige as bark, eyes like pinnated leaves split asunder by sunlight, and he truly understood why all the pretty girls and boys liked Frankie: he was the personified quintessence of the woodlands.
When his attentiveness thrived into intenseness, Carrozza hoarsely said, 'I knew your name.'
'Hmm?'
'Before, when we first met in Whiteley Hall, I asked for your name, but I already knew it,' he answered. 'I already knew who you were.'
Charlie's expression softened into a plea. Thinking back, he couldn't quite be certain of who'd instigated it, but he believed now that their faces were drawn closer until their foreheads pressed together like magnetism. His heart and mouth had blossomed open like a carnation for Carrozza, but Frankie's mouth redirected from it. Charlie didn't recoil. He quickly fathomed that his wasn't reservation teasing him, but Carrozza's attempt not to give in to temptation. Whatever personal burdens plagued his heart, he surrendered to them by not surrendering. This was his refrain. When he felt one of Frankie's large hands encase his cheek, his own hands reached out eagerly to take ahold of his neck and jaw as though to urge the magic out of the mouth that wouldn't or couldn't meet his. They breathed heavily through their flaring nostrils, hearts pounding to reach across the divide wedged by abstinence. When Frankie pressed against the small of Charlie's back, his body quivered beneath his touch. Their heads grazed together like two cats, hair tickling skin and radiating heat that summoned renascent desire.
I surrender, Charlie yearned silently, his hand sliding down the nape of his neck to rest alongside the knee he was pressing into his thigh. If this is the moment of, whenever you're ready, can we surrender?
Rubbing his shoulders and arms, Frankie whispered against his temple, 'You're so ... you're so ingenuous.'
They were in flagrante delicto, here in the garden of the gods. In a world beyond this little one that they'd created in union with their bodies, writing the chapter by pressing pages of their stories together like interlocked fingers, they were destined to leave the fields and forests of youth behind to enter the kingdom and court of elders, where they'd be told their hearts were wrong by unclean hands and mouths. It was there, in that realm full of hypocrisy, where they'd be misunderstood and condemned as abominable sinners. Amongst the crowd of stone throwers, there would be, of course, those who'd walked the unspeakable rite of passage once their bodies were charged with change and they'd made do with what was made available to them—Heaven forbid, within temptation, those who shared the love that dares not speak its name, but will never tell a soul. One day, it may become nothing more than a distant memory once they'd long outgrown the uncommon love—of a time when innocent exploration did not deliver a fall from grace. But here, where they belonged now, they weren't heathens; here, they were as safe and free as the birds that fly above their paradise. Sheltered under curiosity, youth had become a sanctuary. Unbound by a prejudicial society, the same rules need not apply, for they had souls that knew not of what might besmirch them yet: they were too pure. The minds of their peers were not liberated or cleansed, just unfulfilled. If the vast majority was to indulge, the voice of naysayers was but a whisper amongst the babel. It wasn't defiance, but whilst young no such law or legislator existed to defy. Here in the in-between, their nature was more primitive than routine. Only one rule was enforced: joie de vivre.
Holding the forbidden fruit in his hands, temptation urging him to eat the golden apple, their noses squished together as Charlie glanced towards Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden, and to where Patroclus and Achilles lay forgotten and forever separated. His hand glided through the back of Frankie's head to thread through his soft curls until they coiled around his fingers, coppered in the light of the lamp. Although desire was limited by resistance, perhaps this was enough to declare apostasy against God, king, and country that damned them. If it was not to be seen beyond these days, access forbidden by Saint Peter shaking his head at the gates, then perhaps this little fleeting fragment of a treasurable memory made and shared here, where they tempted the Devil to take them, was their only visit of Heaven to come, even if only for just a precious moment in their lives. Before their liberty was shackled by parish compliance and civic duty, they were unencumbered and permitted to freely be their true selves more so than ever before and ever after. Here, underneath his transcending touch, where the silver linings were gilded gold. His wish to stay like this for the rest of eternity was indisputable, statued evermore in the youthful fervour of an amaranthine kiss that wasn't a kiss. Lost, but happy to be so. A thousand years, even. One thousand years, that's all.
The eager and senseless aggression of a fumbling, bumbling passion produced from craving hearts caused them to fall backwards together onto the carpet, knowing nothing else but each other. The fall and the collision broke them apart, but as Charlie looked to the rampant boy laying on top of his arm, an immense golden light speared through his chest to hitch his breathing, an unconquerable and profound sensation that ripped away a stagnant shadow that had lingered much too long inside to replace it with gilded happiness. These stories, with a history older than the foundations of these towns, these were the sort of stories left untold and left behind.
Sitting up, Frankie reached across to drop Charlie's foot onto his lap. He rubbed the foot, travelled on up his leg, and then kissed the sallow bruise stamped into his shin by the Rat King's cane. Strangely, the gesture didn't feel as intimate as much as their foreheads touching did.
'I'll have a word with Gillespie, tell him to lay off you,' he murmured.
'You think he'll listen to even you?' Charlie replied. 'Never worry, have no fear, as I do neither over Peter Gillespie.'
'I'm very persuasive.' Frankie smiled. 'How else do you think I got your help to mop those floors and tidy that kitchen? Or get you here tonight, even? He'll leave you be when I'm about.'
'Do you plan to be—' about?
When Frankie slumped back down onto the carpet beside him, before he quickly drifted into a drunken slumber, he revealed that even his reveries were regal when he asked, 'Do you ... dream of the gods?'
Charlie roused sometime later to settle eyes on the ceiling. The boy beside him was so quiet that he might as well be dead—sprawled on his front, face burrowed into a pillow, as deeply asleep as Endymion in the woods. Once his eyes drifted down to see Frankie's arm draped carelessly across his stomach, he bit his lips to murder a fool's smile.
Am I awake? Charlie gently touched the pinkish knuckles rising from his ribs to feel the grooves between, then carefully lifted the hand so as not to disturb the impossible boy as he rolled from under it. Or slumbering amidst my dreams, or somewhere within a realm between?
When Christian remorse descended dreadfully over him from notions of a carnal sin, only then did he realise that the cuff of his sleeve was trapped underneath Carrozza's shoulder. Reluctant to wake him, he reached across for the sharpest piece of the tumbler sparkling the carpet that Frankie had shattered earlier that night after failing to balance it on his head whilst performing keepie-ups. He used the shard of glass to cut the blue material before he slipped his forearm from it. As he wandered around the room and dressed, he found lotus flowers stuffed into the bookcases, pressed between book pages, littering under the lid of the piano, and thickening the fluff inside the pillows. With Catholic guilt weighing his heart with the ghosts of fear and shame, Charlie left Frankie's loft to allow him to ruse awake and form his own conclusion from the memories made, may they be considered cherished or scattered or regretted.
When he reached Baldwin's Bec, he met other boys hurrying home to race the lock-in; Wally had his leg dangling over the sill of his bedroom window on the ground floor; and Samuel was scaling the pipes.
'Help me!' he hissed to them, levelling Frankie's ladder under his own sill.
His window popped open like a punched pocket of an advent calendar, and Iggy Perkins hung out of it, a teal towel wrapped around his head like a fruit hat.
'Oh, it's you,' he said, pulling the collar of his purple dressing gown around his neck.
'Who else did you expect?' Charlie snapped back. 'The Queen Mother herself?'
Setting aside sliced cucumber and a bowl of turquoise face paste, Iggy held the top of the ladder as an apology and said, 'You're cutting it quite close, Belle de Jour. Didn't anyone on patrol spot your walk of shame?'
'I borrowed his punt.' Once Charlie had slid in through the open window, he hung out of it again to offer his thanks and praise to Wally, who then stowed the ladder back down the alleyway before dashing indoors. 'I think the Drama Master nearly spotted my stride of pride when I rustled a bit too much as I snuck along the banks of the River Thames to find the boat, but I hid behind a tree and pretended to be an owl to throw him off.'
Sliding off the bed, Iggy gripped his chin contemplatively. 'Hmmm, something is different about you now. Did you two—'
'No!' Charlie quickly barked, then winced at the loudness. The scent of Carrozza still clung to his skin, lapses of vanilla engulfing him sporadically like tide washing over coastline. Recalling his vision of a golden arrow made of light spearing through flesh and bone to reach his heart during the moment, Charlie lowered his voice to say, 'Everything inside me feels glittery. I think ... I think that Francesco Carrozza has finally awakened my dormant soul from a long and lonely and nothingness sleep.'