Merouleaned in.He kissed Priddy gently, no more than a moth-brush ofheat across his lips.Priddy smiled and shivered, and he went forit again, powerfully this time, cupping Priddy’s jaw in hishand.
Hekissed him experimentally, investigatively.Then thoroughly, rightto the tongue-root, Priddy thrusting back, eyes closed, tanglinghis fingers in Merou’s hair.A kiss like that ought to have raisedthe dead.Priddy did his best to be raised.When Merou stroked aquerying palm across the front of his jeans, Priddy let his headfall back.He stared blankly off once more into the fake-summersky.“I’m sorry.Sorry, mate.Fuck.”
Merouleaned on his chest.He propped his chin on the back of one handand studied him.“Right,” he said, as if Priddy were a jam jar witha sticky lid, a box that required a crowbar, some everyday solubleproblem instead of a disaster.“Lad doesn’t fancy me, is theobvious conclusion to draw.”
Priddysighed.Merou didn’t seem plagued by insecurities.And it was allright not to fancy him, wasn’t it—even to say so, even after atonsillectomy-snog like that.Still, in the interests oftruthfulness...“Obvious, maybe.But wrong.”
“So, we eliminate that.Next—lad is maybe not gay, or not asgay as he thought, and would prefer other company, softer round thechest region, with the delicate parts tucked away, or most of ’emat any rate.That is still the arrangement, isn’t it, with the landladies?”
“Landladies?”
“Ah, careful.Don’t pack down your English too much, or yoursocks and your knickers will get tangled in the suitcase.Ladies ofthe land.Dames deterre.Notpommesde terre—female primates who live up ontopside, the whole lovely lot of them, Doryty Sharpincluded.”
Priddy snorted.“Stop it, you clown.Don’t youknow?”
“I know my own kind.Though, as far as that goes, and since I’masking you, it’s only fair to tell—Iamas gay as I thought.As anyonecould wish.”
“Honest, mate, I’m getting about one word in ten with you atthe moment.But me, too.From birth and probably prior.”
“Oh, dear.That serious a case, eh?”
“Mm.They even wrote a poem about it.”
“Times Literary Supplement?”
“Toilet wall in my junior school.Bloody uncanny, it’s raining fanny.Just Priddy’s luck—he’squeer as fuck.”
Merougave a strangled hiccup.Then he dissolved into giggles, buryinghis face on Priddy’s chest.The warmth of his breath made Priddy’snipples contract and harden, and he’d have given the world if therest of him would just get the idea and follow suit.“Thanks forthe sympathy.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry.”Merou got his head up, wiping his eyes.“That’s awful.Bloody funny, though.Back to our eliminations.Ladisn’t repelled by me, and doesn’t prefer the girls.Kisses like anangel, and a dirty-minded one at that, but doesn’t raise his flag.How does that come about, then, blue-eyed boy?”
Priddyhid his face.“I can’t tell you.I mean—the whole town knew aboutit at the time, and then there were doctors, and then a bloodycounsellor, and...I just can’t face going through it with someoneagain.”
“All right.But tell me anyway.”
“For crying out loud...”
ButMerou took hold of him and eased him down.He plucked a deadsea-thrift, which regained life and fragrance as he trailed it overPriddy’s sealed lips.“Tell me,” he whispered, insistent and gentleas the murmur of waves in a cave.So Priddy laid his head onMerou’s shoulder, and told him the whole sorry tale.
***
When heopened his eyes again, he was alone.He pushed up on his arms andlooked around the deserted clifftop.There wasn’t so much as a dentin the grass beside him to prove his companion had ever beenthere.
Except,bizarrely, a pile of clothes, neatly folded on a clump of heather.Priddy scrambled to his feet.His T-shirt was there, his jeans,everything he’d involuntarily loaned to Merou, down to the socksand a pair of jockeys which must have indeed matched his eyes.Priddy gathered the things up.He lifted the T-shirt to his nose,hoping for a warm trace of kelp, but all he could smell was washingpowder and woodsmoke from festival barbecues andbonfires.
Goodtimes.Priddy clutched the clothes and stood swaying.The last fewhours with Merou had been very good, apart from the terrifyingbits.Or maybe even including those, the close call with DorytySharp, and the horseback ride.Priddy had never met a man he wantedto share bad times with as well as good.
Had hereally met one now?The idea flashed over him that Merou might justhave gone swimming, so he ran to the edge of the cliff and scannedthe beach below.
Whichwas just Portheras Cove, half a mile south of the lighthouse andfamiliar as the back of his hand.The tide was low, not so much asa hoofprint or footprint to mark the shore.Priddy’s concerns overfinding his way back to the car faded out, replaced by a deeperfear.Slowly he turned round.The Vauxhall was sitting, prosaic asday, on the verge of the Madron road.
The sea horse must have galloped in a circle.Or, as seemedevery second more likely, there never had been a horse, or agourmet breakfast, or a breathtakingly lovely nutcase called Merou.Priddy wondered where he’d come up with the name.Merfor the sea, hesupposed, and he had gone through a big Kerouac phase, back in thedays when he’d thought he might turn out to be a freewheelingspirit, not a deck-scrubber in Rosewarne Cove.
Heminded the proofs of insanity much less than usual.His heart feltemptied out—pleasantly, as if he’d confessed to someone orsomething the story of his last few months, and met with no pity orderision.Maybe he’d just told the sky, which was wintry again now,deep-bellied cumulus rolling inland.He only wished—oh, wished toGod—that Merou had been real.
A note fell out of the pocket of the jeans.Priddy grabbed itbefore the wind could whip it away.He unfolded it with unsteadyfingers, half expecting to find that he’d left a receipt in there,an old shopping list.The paper crackled, began to disintegrateunder his touch.Sorry, MountainKing, it said, in a pointed, beautiful,barely legible script.I got a call andhad to run off on you.Don’t forget about the picnic.Missus andkids—you know how it is.And underneath,like X-marks-the-spot on a pirate’s treasure map, a singlekiss.
Priddy didn’t know how it was.By his own admission, Meroudidn’t either.Then,as gay as anyonecould wishdidn’t necessarily preclude themissus and kids.Perhaps a Mrs Merou somewhere loved him as he was,and had conceived by AI or persuasion to give him the family hedesired.Priddy’s head spun in a vortex of mixed feelings.Hisgreat wish had been granted: this note, written on fragmentingparchment in squid-black ink as it was, confirmed Merou’s realityin the most prosaic terms.But what kind of family man—what kind ofhusband and dad—spent Saturday afternoon up a cliff, trying to coaxa hard-on from a stranger?
